



l^wm---s^ 




Book .O <? 

jet? 









/ 

CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY 



AND OTHER POEMS 

3u 



ROBERT BROWNING 

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON BROWNING'S 
THEORY CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY 

AND NOTES 



BY 

HELOISE E. HERSEY 



AND PREFACE BY 



WILLIAM J. ROLFE, A.M. 



_ 

: 15 1887/' 



>?WASH& " 



BOSTON 

D. LOTHROP & COMPANY 

Franklin and Hawley Streets 



Copyright, 1886, by 
D. LOTHROP & COMPANY. 






PRESS OF HENRY H. CLARK & CO., BOBTON. 



PREFACE. 



When Miss Hersey and I were working to- 
gether on the Select Poems of Browning last 
July, she suggested that an edition of the 
"Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day" might be 
an appropriate book for the coming holiday 
season. I assented most heartily, and urged 
her to prepare the book at once, that it might 
be in the printer's hands before I should return 
from Europe in October. My contribution to 
the work, I said, should be the Preface ; and to 
this promise, made with little thought that it 
would be taken seriously, she and the pub- 
lishers now hold me. 

What more need I say? That I believe 
Browning to be a great religious poet, and 
why I believe it ? But what could I say that 
has not been sufficiently said — and far better 



IV PREFACE. 

than I could put it — in Miss Hersey's intro- 
ductory essay ? 

Let me simply commend both that and the 
poems which follow to all " Christen folk " as 
good reading for Christmas-Eve or Easter-Day, 
or any other time in the year. 

W. J. ROLFE. 
Cambridge, Dec. 16, 1886. 



CONTENTS 



Introductory Essay on Browning's Theory con- 
cerning Personal Immortality 7 

Christmas-Eve 23 

Easter-Day 75 

Saul 113 

An Epistle containing the Strange Medical 
Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physi- 
cian 137 

Notes 149 



5 



The Theory of Robert Browning 

CONCERNING 

PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. 



" Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, 

Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe : 
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear ; 

The rest may reason and welcome : His we musicians know." l 

With such sublime confidence in his own inspiration 
Robert Browning speaks. Whatever we may think of 
him as a poet, or of his theory of poetry, there can be 
little difference of opinion about him as an intellect. 
He represents the most advanced, liberal, logical, scien- 
tific thought of the century. Not even an enemy can 
claim that Browning is in thraldom to Church or to 
Science. Like Bacon he has taken all knowledge for 
his province. There is no poet but Shakespeare who 
gives to even the cursory reader such an impression 
of wide range and strong grasp. Archdeacon Farrar re- 
minded us that simply to read the tables of contents of 
the volumes of Browning's Poems is to make the whole 
circle of the problems and the experiences of life. 

There is, then, a certain rare value in the thought of 
such a man on any one of the vital questions of the 
time. Robert Browning is a scholar. He is also a brave 
thinker, who does not fear the worst that truth can re- 
veal. Add to these facts the further one, that (as many 
of us believe) he is a poet, with a royal commission to 

i Abt Vogler, Robert Browning. 

7 



8 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING 

see and to expound things as they are, and there is rea- 
son enough for trying to find his theory on so vital a 
theme as that of Personal Immortality. 

Perhaps such an investigation of the work of a great 
artist, made for the sake of discovering his belief on one 
of the thousand canons of life, may have an unpleasant 
suggestion of the attempt to submit a work of art to 
the analysis of the laboratory. I can say only, that I am 
aware of the force of the charge, but that the occasion 
seems to me to justify the attempt. The age seeks pas- 
sionately any fact which throws light upon the next 
phase of the soul's life. 

The artist comes that we may have life, and that we 
may have it more abundantly. The poet, especially, 
clings to life. From all time, he has sung the Credo of 
immortality. David hinted it before he even realized it ; 
Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe — the poet of retribution, of 
reconciliation, and of unrest — have all celebrated it; but 
theirs has been for the most part a song of longing, and 
of consequent expectation, rather than of well-grounded 
belief. The argument from desire is so pretty that it 
ought to be useful as well ; but the world lies in hunger 
and cold, longing for food and fire. No soul which sees 
life can fail to doubt, sometimes, if desire is indeed the 
avatit-courier of satisfaction. In cool blood one has 
always had to reply to the poet's confident, " There is a 
life to come, because only by such life can the universe 
become a harmony," with, " But how do you know that 
the universe is meant to be a harmony?" It has re- 
mained for modern science to give to the poet a fact so 
cogent and reasonable that it is unassailable, and, at the 
same time, so lofty and majestic that it is fit stimulant 
for the highest imagination, — the fact of the persistence 
of force. 



CONCERNING PERSON AI« IMMORTALITY. 9 

The most careful science of the day declares it ab- 
surd to suppose every energy of the universe conserved, 
except that marvelous energy which we call the human 
mind. If that goes out into blank non-activity at death, 
it is an absurdity beyond belief, the only instance of the 
destruction of a force. 

Browning is the first poet who has assimilated this 
theory completely. It comes forward constantly in his 
poetry. It is evidently the foundation of his impregnable 
belief in immortality. 1 

Browning believes that the soul will continue, because 
no force nor motion can be lost. For the proof of this 
conviction of the permanence of spiritual power, one cita- 
tion is so complete that it may serve for the score which 
might be given : 

" There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as before 
The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; 
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more : 
On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect round. 

" All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist ; 

Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hotir. 

" And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 

For the fulness of the days ? Have we withered or agonized ? 
Why else was the pause prolonged, but that singing might issue 
thence ? 
Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be 
prized?" 2 

1 The reader must distinguish, as the writer will endeavor to do, between 
the phrase " Personal Immortality " and the term " Immortality." I do not 
wish to represent Browning as claiming so manifest a logical impossibility as 
that, because no force is wasted, each unit of force will remain forever apart 
from all other units. I shall hope to show presently that Browning's belief 
in personal immortality rests upon another set of facts. 

2 Abt Vogler, stanzas 9, 10, 11. 



IO THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING 

This exposition is perfect enough to satisfy the logi- 
cian. Indeed, it is so complete as to make us doubt 
whether the poet, so much as the philosopher, speaks. 
Abt Vogler would have been greater poetry if it had 
been less evident syllogistic reasoning. 

But we come to the next step in Browning's theory 
of the universe. Granting that force must persist, he is 
still fronted by the question, " What, then, is the signifi- 
cance of this life ? Why the struggle, the darkness, the 
failure, or even the success ? If all effort is permanent, 
if the thing that hath been is that which shall be, why all 
the stress and strain of earth ? " To these questions he 
proposes an answer so simple that it might seem bor- 
rowed from the cant of the pseudo-theologian, did we 
not know the honesty and the scientific spirit of the man. 
He replies: "This life is a test, an epoch, — brief, it is 
true, but determining the direction of the persisting force. 
Energy is bound to survive in some form or other ; but 
its form of survival is the grand enigma which this 
world settles." Let the poet speak for himself. 

Christmas-Eve and Easter-Day are rendered doubly 
important, in such a study as this, by the fact that they 
are the solitary poems in which Browning speaks with- 
out the cothurnus of the drama. In Easter-Day the 
soul is pictured as surprised by the Judgment-Day: 

" In very deed 
(I uttered to myself) that Day ! 
The intuition burned away 
All darkness from my spirit too : 
There stood I, found and fixed, I knew, 
Choosing the world. 



Since my life had end 
And my choice with it — best defend, 
Applaud both ! 



CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. II 

A voice 
Beside me spoke thus, ' Life is done, 
Time ends, Eternity 's begun, 
And thou art judged forevermore.' 



< This world, 
This finite life thou hast preferred, 
In disbelief of God's own word, 
To heaven and to infinity. 
Here the probation was for thee, 
To show thy soul the earthly mixed 
With heavenly it must choose betwixt. 
The earthly joys lay palpable, — 
A taint, in each, distinct as well ; 
The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, 
Above them, but as truly were 
Taintless, so, in their nature, best. 
Thy choice was earth : thou didst attest 
'Twas fitter spirit should subserve 
The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve 
Beneath the spirit's play. 

Thou art shut 
Out of the heaven of spirit ; glut 
Thy sense upon the world : 'tis thine 
Forever, — take it!'" 1 

Browning dwells with ever-deepening seriousness on 
the eternal nature of human, earthly choice. It maj be 
instantaneous, it may be despairing, it may be at the 
last moment, — all these hopes he will hold out to us; 
but when it comes, it determines. We may grumble at 
the nature of the task set before us, but the demand is 
inexorable. If we dally, we lose. But ever so feebly to 
choose heaven, to refuse earth, is to win eternal life. 
This brief outline of his theory must now be filled out 

1 Easter-Day, xvi., xvii., xx. 



12 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING 

by a group of citations.. The first is from the lips of 
the Pope, in The Ring arid the Book. He says to Ca- 
ponsacchi, the brave, tempted, conquering, triumphant, 
heart-broken young priest : 

" Never again elude the choice of tints ; 
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good 
Compensate bad in man, absolve him so ; 
Life's business being just the terrible choice." 1 

Again the Pope speaks : 

" Is this our ultimate stage ? or starting-place 
To try man's foot, if it will creep or climb, 
'Mid obstacles in seeming, points that prove 
Advantage for who vaults from low to high, 
And makes the stumbling-block a stepping-stone ? " a 

Still again : 

" Life is probation, and this earth no goal, 
But starting-point of man." 

There was never more lofty condemnation of the quer- 
ulous spirit which criticises the plan by which the soul 
wins from earth's struggle immortal life : 

" Is God mocked, as He asks ? 
Shall I take on me to change his tasks, 
And dare, dispatched to a river-head . 
For a simple draught of the element, 
Neglect the thing for which He sent, 
And return with another thing instead ? — 
Saying, ' Because the water found 
Welling up from underground 
Is mingled with the taints of earth, 
While Thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, 
And couldst at wink or word convulse 

1 The Pope, 1. 1234. 2 The Pope, 1. 409. 



CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. 1 3 

The world with the leap of a river-pulse ! — 

Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, 

And bring Thee a chalice I found instead : 

See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy ! 

One would suppose that the marble bled. 

What matters the water ? A hope I have nursed 

The waterless cup will quench my thirst.' 

Better have knelt at the poorest stream 

That trickles in pain from the straitest rift ; 

For the less or the more is all God's gift, 

Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite seam." 1 

The soul which accepts its conditions thrives and 
strengthens with the struggle: 

" When the fight begins within himself, 
A man 's worth something." 2 

" I count life just a stuff 
To try the soul's strength on, educe the man. 
Who keeps one end in view, makes all things serve." 8 

In Saul, Browning speaks of this life as 

" The dream, the probation, the prelude," * 

and foresees the man, now sore beset, 

« By the pain-throb triumphantly winning intensified bliss, 
And the next world's reward and repose by the struggle in this." 5 

The Ring and the Book is one long, splendid argument 
for another life. Its general nature is that of the so- 
called moral argument. Human justice, with its inade- 
quacy, must be a prophecy of *a divine justice, complete 
and satisfying. But I want here to cite three memorable 
passages which concern the relation of choice to eternal 

* Christmas-Day, xxii. s /* « Balcony, Part Third. 

» Bishop Blougram's Apology. * Saul, xvii. 5 Saul, xvu. 



14 THE THEORY OP ROBERT BROWNING 

destiny. The first is one of the most terrible that 
Browning has written. Count Guido — a profligate, a 
liar, a murderer — has filled up the measure of his 
crimes. Here at last is come 

u a devil more damn'd 
In evils to top Macbeth." 

He has shamefully deceived Pompilia, the cleanest, most 
child-like soul that ever lived. He has held her bound 
on the rack of hideous moral torture for two years. At 
last he has murdered her and both her foster-parents. 
Caponsacchi, a young priest, has made a brave attempt, 
half successful, to save Pompilia. He has learned the 
beauty of her soul and the incredible deformity of 
Guido's. In an impassioned speech before the judges 
of the cause, he depicts the future of the Count : 

" And thus I see him slowly and surely edged 
Off all the table-land whence life upsprings 
Aspiring to be immortality. 



So I lose Guido in the loneliness, 
Silence, and dusk, till at the doleful end, 
At the horizontal line, creation's verge, 
From what just is, to absolute nothingness — 
Lo, what is this he meets, strains onward still ? 
What other man, deep further in the fate, 
Who, turning at the prize of a footfall 
To flatter him and promise fellowship, 
Discovers in the act a frightful face — 
Judas, made monstrous by much solitude ! 



There let them grapple, denizens o' the dark, 
Foes or friends, but indissolubly bound, 
In their one spot out of the ken of God 
Or care of man for ever and evermore." 1 

1 Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 1. 1898. 



CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. 1 5 

But even for this creature, unmatched in history but 
by Judas, the godly Pope has a shadow of a hope. If 
there be but the least chance for so depraved a soul, no 
pain is too great, and no judgment too severe, to win it. 
As the Pope signs Guido's death-warrant he exclaims : 

" I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth 
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all ; 
But the night's black was burst through by a blaze — 
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, 
Through her whole length of mountain visible ; 
There lay the city — thick and plain with spires, 
And, like a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. 
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, 
And Guido see one instant and be saved. " x 

It is of course most fitting that the murdered Pompilia 
should have a word of hope and mercy for her husband. 
One faintest desire after righteousness will, she believes, 
bring forgiveness : 

" But where will God be absent ? In His face 
Is light, but in His shadow healing, too ! 
Let Guido touch the shadow, and be healed ! " 2 

The value of struggle, the stimulus of temptation, the 
saving power of pain, — these are the gracious lights in 
" this present evil world." 

" Was the trial sore ? 
Temptation sharp ? Thank God a second time ! 
Why comes temptation but for man to meet 
And master and make crouch beneath his foot, 
And so be pedestalled in triumph ? Pray 
1 Lead us into no such temptations, Lord ! ' 
Yea, but, O Thou whose servants are the bold, 
Lead such temptations by the head and hair, 
Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, 
That so he may do battle and have praise." 3 
» The Pope, 1. 2133. 2 Pompilia, 1. 1720. 8 The Pope, 1. 1182. 



l6 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING 

No modern theologian believes more completely in 
the development of character by the experiences of life 
than does Robert Browning. If he is set down by some 
theologians as an irreligious poet, it is because — along 
with this conviction held in common with the Calvinists 
— he has the other conviction that the fittest and only 
the fittest will survive. This is modern doctrine. We 
have accustomed ourselves to it in the realm of animal 
life, so that the phrase no longer shocks us. We are 
content that the age of the mastodon is past. We prac- 
tise the selecting process with our domestic animals. 
We even look on, with regret truly, but with repose, 
while the weakest is pushed to the wall in the struggle 
between labor and capital. But we are not yet accus- 
tomed to regard God as the originator of all this mighty 
system, whose primary law is, " To him that hath shall be 
given." Still less are we ready to spur our imagination 
to the task of conceiving a coming phase of life where 
the process shall go on eternally, where good shall en- 
large and expand, and where evil shall slowly but surely 
gather its folds about its victim — say, rather, about its 
lover — until all life and all desire for life go out to- 
gether. To this realization Robert Browning has come. 
The power which conquers the universe is a moral power. 
This moral power has its root in choice, — human choice 
made in this world. 

" There 's a fancy some lean to and others hate — 
That, when this life is ended, begins 
New work for the soul in another state, 
Where it strives and gets weary, loses and wins : 
Where the strong and the weak, this world's congeries, 
Repeat in large what they practised in small, 
Through life after life in unlimited series ; 
Only the scale 's to be changed, that 's all. 



CONCERNING PERSON AE IMMORTALITY. 1 7 

Yet I hardly know. When a soul has seen, 

By the means of Evil, that Good is best, 

And, through earth and its noise, what is heaven's serene, — 

When its faith in the same has stood the test — 

Why, the child grown man, you burn the rod, 

The uses of labor are surely done ; 

There remaineth a rest for the people of God : 

And I have had troubles enough, for one." x 

Out of Browning's conviction of the omnipotence of 
individual, earthly choice comes his belief in individual 
persistence. "Why such pains," he asks, "to develop 
the force of a person, unless that force is to remain ? " 
By every charm of which poetry is mistress he labors to 
convince us that he speaks truth when he says, 

" And I shall behold Thee, face to face, O God ! " 

Browning has one poem which avowedly deals with this 
subject alone, — La Saisiaz. It is too complex in emo- 
tion to be fairly quotable. I commend it to my readers 
in its completeness. But I must say that, unlike most of 
Browning's work, it has in it the note of personal feeling, 
sorrow, disturbance. It seems to me less valuable as a 
test of its author's real, established thought about the 
secret of life than many of the more scattered touches. 

There is no way of accounting for Browning's passion 
for the development of the individual except by saying 
th?t he sees the vision of the future in which the indi- 
vidual persists. He will that the impulses of the human 
soul be worked out at all hazards. Fear, faltering, irres- 
olution, — what are all these but paraphrases for weak 
personality ? These are the foes against which he sets 
his fiercest lance. No poem has been more perversely 

1 Old Pictures in Florence, stanzas 21, 22. 



1 8 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING 

interpreted than The Statue a?id the Bust. Its whole 
force lies in the lines which so sublimely condense the 
parable of the Foolish Virgins : 

" The sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 
Was the unlit lamp and the ungirt lion." 1 

The same feeling is the motif of that crux of Ameri- 
can Browning students, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower 
Came. On this Mr. Arlo Bates has given us recently so 
perfect a prose variation — he disclaims the word "expla- 
nation " — that I must rather quote him than paraphrase 
him. "Childe Roland is the most supreme expression 
of a noble allegiance to an ideal, — the most absolute 
faithfulness to a principle, regardless of all else. . . . 
What does it matter what the tower signifies, — whether 
it be this, that, or the other? The essential thing is 
that, after a lifetime pledged to this, — whatever the ideal 
may be, — the opportunity has come after a cumulative 
series of disappointments, and more than all amid an 
overwhelming sense that failure must be certain where 
so many have failed. . . . And the sublime climax 
comes in the constancy of the hero : 

'Ina sheet of flame 
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet 
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set 
And blew ! ' " 2 

Constancy, courage, resolution, — these are the virtues 
which save character. 

But one more step and my analysis is complete. These 
are the high, difficult virtues. A great teacher says, 

1 The Statue and the Bust, p. 123. 

2 Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, End. 



CONCERNING PERSON AI, IMMORTALITY. 1 9 

" Be strong, be brave, and you shall live ! " But must 
he answer to the cry, "How can we find strength and 
courage ? " — "I do not know." ? Certainly Browning 
has a more hopeful reply. 

Sidney Lanier tells us that the last twenty centuries 
have spent their best power upon the development of 
the idea of personality. Literature, education, govern- 
ment, and religion have learned to recognize the individ- 
ual as the unit of force. Browning goes a step further. 
He declares that so powerful is a complete personality 
that its very touch gives life and courage and potency. 
He turns to history for the inspiration of enduring virtue 
and the stimulus for sustained effort, and he finds both 
in Jesus Christ. In him is, at once, the possibility, the 
promise, and the proof that each human soul may live 
forever. Personality — symmetrical and unmarred — is 
divine. To love a completely noble person is to have 
in one's soul the supreme stimulus to noble and per- 
sistent action. No lower motive will avail. Love is the 
only force which conquers easily and invariably the temp- 
tations to irresolution and cowardice. Strong virtue is 
instantly preferred to weak yielding, because no sacrifice 
is so painful as would be the sense of shocked and in- 
jured love. So divine ingenuity takes advantage of every 
human function for purposes of help. The imagination 
is quickened by the figure of the Christ, the heart is 
touched by his pain, and the brain fired by his courage 
and persistence. God will not transcend his laws to pre- 
serve a human soul, but he will devise means for saving 
it within these laws. 

" And thence I conclude that the real God-function 
Is to furnish a motive and injunction 
For practising what we know already." 



20 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING 

Such a motive, Browning goes on to declare, is Christ. 
Man — 

" Gropes for something more substantial 
Than a fable, myth, or personification. 
May Christ do for him what no mere man can, 
And stand confessed as the God of salvation ! " * 

In concluding, I want to notice three poems of Brown- 
ing in which this potency of the Christ motive is declared 
and explained. They will rank among his very greatest 
poems in point of artistic form as well as in ethical 
meaning. They are A Death in the Desert, The Strange 
Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician, 
and Saul. 

A Death in the Desert is a monologue given by a dis- 
ciple of John, and describing the last hour of the Apostle. 
The scene is sketched, — a solitary cave, in whose mid- 
chamber — 

" Since noon's light reached there a little," 

bedded on a camel-skin, the old man lies unconscious. 
He rouses at the very end, and makes a supreme effort 
for a last word of cheer to his disciples. He feels the 
cloud of doubt gathering about his followers. When he 
shall die, — 

" There is left on earth 
No one alive who knew (consider this ! ) — 
Saw with his eyes and handled with his hands 
That which was from the first the Word of Life." 

Upon him is the full need for complete human assur- 
ance. Judge with what intensity he speaks. He meets 
and faces the most dangerous arguments against the 
religion of Christ. His weapons may be held in trem- 

1 Christmas-Eve. 



CONCERNING PKRSONAIv IMMORTALITY. 21 

bling hands, but they are potent yet. He recalls for the 
listening group the person and the ineffable love of 
Christ. Then he breathes once more the secret of this 
life: 

" For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
And hope and fear, — believe the aged friend, — 
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love, 
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is ; 
And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost 
Such prize despite the envy of the world, 
And, having gained truth, keep truth : that is all. 



Helpful was the light, 
And warmth was cherishing, and food was choice 
To every man's flesh, thousand years ago, 
As now to yours and mine ; the body sprang 
At once to the height and stayed; but the soul, — no ! 
Since sages who, this noontide, meditate 
In Rome or Athens, may descry some point 
Of the eternal power, hid yester eve ; 
And as thereby the power's whole mass extends, 
So much extends the ether floating o'er 
The love that tops the might, the Christ in God. 



I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it, 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise." 



The whole poem is subtle and mystical; but once 
understood it is rich in suggestion. The growth of the 
soul, its new powers born to-day out of the weaknesses 
of yesterday, its certainties, its hopes, are all touched with 
the hand of poet and philosopher. 

The Epistle of Karshish is addressed to a wise doc- 
tor, Ahib, by a young disciple. It relates in friendly yet 
scientific tone a meeting of Karshish with a strange 



22 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING 

man, — Lazarus. The conviction of Lazarus that he 
was raised from the dead by a Nazarene is treated, of 
course, like a curious delusion. But struggling under 
this calm incredulity of the physician is the passionate 
desire of the human soul for a personal affection and a 
personal force outside itself and omnipotent. I quote 
two short passages in which the contest between the 
doubt of the scientist and the longing of the child 
reaches its climax: 

" This man so cured regards the curer then, 
As — God forgive me — who but God himself, 
Creator and Sustainer of the world, 
That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile ! — 
'Sayeth that such an One was born and lived, 
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, 
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, 
And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat, 
And must have so avouched himself, in fact, 
In hearing of this very Lazarus 
Who saith — but why all this of what he saith ? 
Why write of trivial matters, things of price 
Calling at every moment for remark ? 



The very God ! think, Ahib ! dost thou think ? 
So, the All-Great were the All-Loving, too — 
So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, ' O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Face my hands fashioned, see it in myself. 
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of mine, 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
And thou must love me who have died for thee ! 
The madman saith He said so ; it is strange.' " 

Saul is a dramatic monologue from the lips of David. 
It describes one of those strange interviews between 
himself and Saul when the soul of the king was re- 
called from its wanderings by means of music. David 



CONCERNING PERSONAL IMMORTALITY. 23 

finds an "agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and 
dumb." Then he sings to him, — first, the songs of the 
people — the sheep call, the reapers' tune, the funeral 
hymn. Then comes a great melody of patriotism, — 

"All 
Brought to blaze on the head of one creature, — King Saul ! " 

David promises him such fame as the world has not 
known. 

" Each deed thou hast done 
Dies, revives, goes to work in the world — 



Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, shall thrill 
Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor. 



So the pen gives unborn generations their due and their part 

In thy being ! Then, first of the mighty, thank God that thou art ! " 

But David feels how empty is the promise of immortal 
faine to the soul craving immortal life. It is a stirring 
strain. But the weakness which paralyzes the Positivist 
is in his song. The immortality of the race and the 
permanence of human society are truths, but they fall 
far short of being the whole truth. Without the vision 
of the dignity of the Person, the world becomes a crude 
rehearsal of some great drama, with the heroic parts all 
silenced. As David sings, a dream quickens within him. 
Out of the darkness of the age gleams the great Christ- 
figure — the warm personal presence — which is alone 
sufficient to enliven and sustain the struggling powers of 

the captive king. 

11 Saul, it shall be 
A face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me 
Thou shalt love and be loved by forever ; a hand like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See, the Christ 
stand ! " 



24 THE THEORY OF ROBERT BROWNING. 

A Personal Force comes to the aid of a personal 
struggle. Browning believes so firmly that only such a 
Force can avail in such a struggle that he suggests to us 
the miracle of its revelation even in the century of David. 
If that is anthropomorphism, the readers of the most 
modern of poets must make the most of it. The hope of 
permanent influence in society is not enough for the soul 
which longs to live consciously and forever. Browning 
promises us, by the mouth of David, a double immortality 
— one in the influences which we have initiated; but the 
other, and the larger and more vital, in the characters 
which we have completed. 

To such a life Browning calls the soul. He has satis- 
fied himself that force persists, that mind is the supreme 
force, that personal character is the highest fruit of mind. 
The worth and permanence of the individual soul is re- 
vealed to him as a certainty. He stands in a throng of 
poets, some of whom commend us to nature as the source 
of peace, some, to the future of humanity, some, to the 
joys of the moment. But — 

" He, there, with the brand flamboyant broad o'er night's forlorn abyss, 
Crowned by prose and verse ; and wielding with Wit's bauble, Learn- 
ing's rod — 
Well? — Why, he at least believed in Soul, was very sure of God." 

HELOISE EDWINA HERSEY. 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

FLORENCE, i8jo. 



CHRISTMAS-EVE. 



Out of the little chapel I burst, 
Into the fresh night-air again. 
Five minutes full I waited, first 
In the doorway, to escape the rain 
That drove in gusts down the common's centre, 
At the edge of which the chapel stands, 
Before I plucked up heart to enter. 
Heaven knows how many sorts of hands 
Reached past me, groping for the latch 
Of the inner door that hung on catch, 
More obstinate the more they fumbled, 
Till, giving way at last with a scold 
Of the crazy hinge, in squeezed or tumbled 
One sheep more to the rest in fold, 
And left me irresolute, standing sentry 
In the sheepfold's lath-and-plaster entry, 
Four feet long by two feet wide, 
Partitioned off from the vast inside — 
I blocked up half of it at least. 
No remedy ; the rain kept driving. 
They eyed me much as some wild beast, 
That congregation, still arriving, 
Some of them by the main road, white 
A long way past me into the night, 
Skirting the common, then diverging ; 

-7 



28 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Not a few suddenly emerging 

From the common's self through the paling-gaps, — 

They house in the gravel-pits perhaps, 

Where the road stops short with its safeguard border 

Of lamps, as tired of such disorder ; — 30 

But the most turned in yet more abruptly 

From a certain squalid knot of alleys, 

Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, 

Which now the little chapel rallies 

And leads into day again, — its priestliness 

Lending itself to hide their beastliness 

So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), 

And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on 

Those neophytes too much in lack of it, 

That, where you cross the common as I did, 40 

And meet the party thus presided, 

" Mount Zion " with Love-lane at the back of it, 

They front you as little disconcerted 

As, bound for the hills, her fate averted, 

And her wicked people made to mind him, 

Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him. 

II. 

Well, from the road, the lanes, or the common, 

In came the flock : the fat weary woman, 

Panting and bewildered, down-clapping 

Her umbrella with a mighty report, 50 

Grounded it by me, wry and flapping, 

A wreck of whalebones ; then, with a snort, 

Like a startled horse, at the interloper 



6o 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 29 

(Who humbly knew himself improper, 

But could not shrink up small enough) — 

Round to the door, and in, — the gruff 

Hinge's invariable scold 

Making my very blood run cold. 

Prompt in the wake of her, up-pattered 

On broken clogs, the many-tattered, 

Little, old-faced, peaking, sister-turned-mother 

Of the sickly babe she tried to smother 

Somehow up, with its spotted face, 

From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place ; 

She too must stop, wring the poor ends dry 

Of a draggled shawl, and add thereby 

Her tribute to the door-mat, sopping 

Already from my own clothes' dropping, 

Which yet she seemed to grudge I should stand on ; 

Then, stooping down to take off her pattens, 7° 

She bore them defiantly, in each hand one, 

Planted together before her breast 

And its babe, as good as a lance in rest. 

Close on her heels, the dingy satins 

Of a female something, past me flitted, 

With lips as much too white, as a streak 

Lay far too red on each hollow cheek ; 

And it seemed the very door-hinge pitied 

All that was left of a woman once, 

Holding at least its tongue for the nonce. ^ 8 

Then a tall yellow man, like the Penitent Thief, 

With his jaw bound up in a handkerchief, 

And eyelids screwed together tight, 



3C CHRISTMAS-KVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Led himself in by some inner light. 

And, except from him, from each that entered, 

I got the same interrogation — 

" What, you, the alien, you have ventured 

To take with us, the elect, your station ? 

A carer for none of it, a Gallio ? " — 

Thus, plain as print, I read the glance 9c 

At a common prey, in each countenance 

As of huntsman giving his hounds the tallyho. 

And, when the door's cry drowned their wonder, 

The draught, it always sent in shutting, 

Made the flame of the single tallow candle 

In the cracked square lantern I stood under, 

Shoot its blue lip at me, rebutting, 

As it were, the luckless cause of scandal : 

I verily fancied the zealous light, 

(In the chapel's secret, too !) for spite 100 

Would shudder itself clean off the wick, 

With the airs of a Saint John's Candlestick. 

There was no standing it much longer. 

" Good folks," thought I, as resolve grew stronger, 

" This way you perform the Grand-Inquisitor, 

When the weather sends you a chance visitor ? 

You are the men, and wisdom shall die with you, 

And none of the old Seven Churches vie with you ! 

But still, despite the pretty perfection 

To which you carry your trick of exclusive ness, no 

And, taking God's word under wise protection, 

Correct its tendency to diffusiveness, 

And bid one reach it over hot ploughshares, — 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 3 1 

Still, as I say, though you've found salvation, 

If I should choose to cry, as now, ' Shares ! ' — 

See if the best of you bars me my ration ! 

I prefer, if you please, for my expounder 

Of the laws of the feast, the feast's own Founder ; 

Mine's the same right with your poorest and sickliest, 

Supposing I don the marriage-vestiment : 120 

So, shut your mouth and open your Testament, 

And carve me my portion at your quickliest ! " 

Accordingly, as a shoemaker's lad 

With wizened face in want of soap, 

And wet apron wound round his waist like a rope, 

(After stopping outside, for his cough was bad, 

To get the fit over, poor gentle creature, 

And so avoid disturbing the preacher) — 

Passed in, I sent my elbow spikewise 

At the shutting door, and entered likewise, 130 

Received the hinge's accustomed greeting, 

And crossed the threshold's magic pentacle, 

And found myself in full conventicle, — 

To wit, in Zion Chapel Meeting, 

On the Christmas-Eve of 'Forty-nine, 

Which, calling its flock to their special clover, 

Found all assembled and one sheep over, 

Whose lot, as the weather pleased, was mine. 

in. 

I very soon had enough of it. 

The hot smell and the human noises, 140 

And my neighbor's coat, the greasy cuff of it, 



32 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Were a pebble-stone that a child's hand poises, 

Compared with the pig-of-lead-like pressure 

Of the preaching-man's immense stupidity, 

As he poured his doctrine forth, full measure, 

To meet his audience's avidity. 

You needed not the wit of the Sibyl 

To guess the cause of it all, in a twinkling : 

No sooner got our friend an inkling 

Of treasure hid in the Holy Bible, 150 

(Whene'er 'twas that the thought first struck him, 

How death, at unawares, might duck him 

Deeper than the grave, and quench 

The gin-shop's light in hell's grim drench) 

Than he handled it so, in fine irreverence, 

As to hug the book of books to pieces : 

And, a patchwork of chapters and texts in severance, 

Not improved by the private dog's-ears and creases, 

Having clothed his own soul with, he'd fain see 

equipt yours, — 
So, tossed you again your Holy Scriptures. 160 

And you picked them up, in a sense, no doubt : 
Nay, had but a single face of my neighbors 
Appeared to suspect that the preacher's labors 
Were help which the world could be saved without, 
'Tis odds but I might have borne in quiet 
A qualm or two at my spiritual diet, 
Or — (who can tell?) — perchance even mustered 
Somewhat to urge in behalf of the sermon : 
But the flock sat on, divinely flustered, 
Sniffing, methought, its dew of Hermon 170 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 33 

With such content in every snuffle, 

As the devil inside us loves to ruffle. 

My old fat woman purred with pleasure, 

And thumb round thumb went twirling faster, 

While she, to his periods keeping measure, 

Maternally devoured the pastor. 

The man with the handkerchief untied it, 

Showed us a horrible wen inside it, 

Gave his eyelids yet another screwing, 

And rocked himself as the woman was doing. 180 

The shoemaker's lad, discreetly choking, 

Kept down his cough. 'Twas too provoking ! 

My gorge rose at the nonsense and stuff of it ; 

So, saying like Eve when she plucked the apple, 

" I wanted a taste, and now there 's enough of it," 

I flung out of the little chapel. 

IV. 

There was a lull in the rain, a lull 

In the wind too ; the moon was risen, 

And would have shone out pure and full, 

But for the ramparted cloud-prison, 190 

Block on block built up in the West, 

For what purpose the wind knows best, 

Who changes his mind continually. 

And the empty other half of the sky 

Seemed in its silence as if it knew 

What, any moment, might look through 

A chance gap in that fortress massy : — 



34 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Through its fissures you got hints 

Of the flying moon, by the shifting tints, 

Now, a dull lion-color, now, brassy 200 

Burning to yellow, and whitest yellow, 

Like furnace-smoke just ere the flames bellow, 

All a-simmer with intense strain 

To let her through, — then blank again, 

At the hope of her appearance failing. 

Just by the chapel, a break in the railing 

Shows a narrow path directly across ; 

'Tis ever dry walking there, on the moss — 

Besides, you go gently all the way uphill. 

I stooped under and soon felt better ; 210 

My head grew lighter, my limbs more supple, 

As I walked on, glad to have slipt the fetter. 

My mind was full of the scene I had left, 

That placid flock, that pastor vociferant, — 

How this outside was pure and different ! 

The sermon, now — what a mingled weft 

Of good and ill ! were either less, 

Its fellow had colored the whole distinctly ; 

But alas for the excellent earnestness, 

And the truths, quite true if stated succinctly, 220 

But as surely false, in their quaint presentment, 

However to pastor and flock's contentment ! 

Say, rather, such truths looked false to your eyes, 

With his provings and parallels twisted and twined, 

Till how could you know them, grown double their 

size 
In the natural fog of the good man's mind, 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 35 

Like yonder spots of our roadside lamps 

Haloed about with the common's damps ? 

Truth remains true, the fault's in the prover ; 

The zeal was good, and the aspiration ; 230 

And yet, and yet, yet, fifty times over, 

Pharaoh received no demonstration 

By his Baker's dream of Baskets Three, 

Of the doctrine of the Trinity, — 

Although, as our preacher thus embellished it, 

Apparently his hearers relished it 

With so unfeigned a gust — who knows if 

They did not prefer our friend to Joseph ? 

But so it is everywhere, one way with all of them ! 

These people have really felt, no doubt, 240 

A something, the motion they style the Call of them ; 

And this is their method of bringing about, 

By a mechanism of words and tones, 

(So many texts in so many groans) 

A sort of reviving or reproducing, 

More or less perfectly — (who can tell ? ) — 

Of the mood itself, that strengthens by using ; 

And how it happens, I understand well. 

A tune was born in my head last week, 

Out of the thump-thump and shriek-shriek 250 

Of the train, as I came by it, up from Manchester ; 

And when, next week, I take it back again, 

My head will sing to the engine's clack again. 

While it only makes my neighbor's haunches stir, — 

Finding no dormant musical sprout 

In him, as in me, to be jolted out. 



36 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Tis the taught already that profits by teaching ; 
He gets no more from the railway's preaching 
Than, from this preacher who does the rail's office, I ; 
Whom therefore the flock cast a jealous eye on. 260 
Still, why paint over their door " Mount Zion," 
To which all flesh shall come, saith the prophecy ? 

V. 

But wherefore be harsh on a single case ? 

After how many modes, this Christmas-Eve, 

Does the selfsame weary thing take place ? 

The same endeavor to make you believe, 

And with much the same effect, no more : 

Each method abundantly convincing, 

As I say, to those convinced before, 

But scarce to be swallowed without wincing, 270 

By the not-as-yet-convinced. For me, 

I have my own church equally: 

And in this church my faith sprang first ! 

(I said, as I reached the rising ground, 

And the wind began again, with a burst 

Of rain in my face, and a glad rebound 

From the heart beneath, as if, God speeding me, 

I entered His church-door, Nature leading me), — 

In youth I looked to these very skies, 

And, probing their immensities, 280 

I found God there, His visible power ; 

Yet felt in my heart, amid all its sense 

Of the power, an equal evidence 

That His love, there too, was the nobler dower. 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 37- 

For the loving worm within its clod 

Were diviner than a loveless god 

Amid his worlds, I will dare to say. 

You know what I mean : God 's all, man 's naught : 

But also, God, whose pleasure brought 

Man into being, stands away 290 

As it were a handbreadth off, to give 

Room for the newly-made to live, 

And look at Him from a place apart, 

And use His gifts of brain and heart, 

Given, indeed, but to keep for ever. 

Who speaks of man, then, must not sever 

Man's very elements from man, 

Saying, " But all is God's " — whose plan 

Was to create man and then leave him 

Able, His own word saith, to grieve Him, 300 

But able to glorify Him too, 

As a mere machine could never do, 

That prayed or praised, all unaware 

Of its fitness for aught but praise and prayer, 

Made perfect as a thing of course. 

Man, therefore, stands on his own stock 

Of love and power as a pin-point rock, . 

And, looking to God who ordained divorce 

Of the rock from His boundless continent, 

Sees, in His power made evident, 310 

Only excess by a million-fold 

O'er the power God gave man in the mould. 

For, note : man's hand, first formed to carry 

A few pounds' weight, when taught to marry 



38 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Its strength with an engine's, lifts a mountain, — 

Advancing in power by one degree ; 

And why count steps through eternity ? 

But love is the ever-springing fountain : 

Man may enlarge or narrow his bed 

For the water's play, but the water-head — 320 

How can he multiply or reduce it ? 

As easy create it, as cause it to cease ; 

He may profit by it, or abuse it, 

But 'tis not a thing to bear increase 

As power does : be love less or more 

In the heart of man, he keeps it shut 

Or opes it wide, as he pleases, but 

Love's sum remains what it was before. 

So, gazing up, in my youth, at love 

As seen through power, ever above 33° 

All modes which make it manifest, 

My soul brought all to a single test — 

That He, the Eternal First and Last, 

Who, in His power, had so surpassed 

All man conceives of what is might, — 

Whose wisdom, too, showed infinite, — 

Would prove as infinitely good ; 

Would never (my soul understood), 

With power to work all love desires, 

Bestow e'en less than man requires : 340 

That He who endlessly was teaching, 

Above my spirit's utmost reaching, 

What love can do in the leaf or stone 

(So that to master this alone, 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 39 

This done in the stone or leaf for me, 

I must go on learning endlessly) 

Would never need that I, in turn, 

Should point Him out defect unheeded, 

And show that God had yet to learn 

What the meanest human creature needed, — 350 

Not life, to wit, for a few short years, 

Tracking his way through doubts and fears, 

While the stupid earth on which I stay 

Suffers no change, but passive adds 

Its myriad years to myriads, 

Though I, He gave it to, decay, 

Seeing death come and choose about me, 

And my dearest ones depart without me. 

No : love which, on earth, amid all the shows of it, 

Has ever been seen the sole good of life in it, 360 

The love, ever growing there, spite of the strife in it, 

Shall arise, made perfect, from death's repose of it 1 

And I shall behold Thee, face to face, 

God, and in Thy light retrace 

How in all I loved here, still wast Thou ! 
Whom pressing to, then, as I fain would now, 

1 shall find as able to satiate 

The love, Thy gift, as my spirit's wonder 

Thou art able to quicken and sublimate, 

With this sky of Thine that I now walk under, 370 

And glory in Thee for, as I gaze 

Thus, thus ! Oh, let men keep their ways 

Of seeking Thee in a narrow shrine — 

Be this my way ! And this is mine ! 



4-0 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

VI. 

For lo, what think you ? suddenly 

The rain and the wind ceased, and the sky 

Received at once the full fruition 

Of the moon's consummate apparition. 

The black cloud-barricade was riven, 380 

Ruined beneath her feet, and driven 

Deep in the West ; while, bare and breathless, 

North and South and East lay ready 

For a glorious thing, that, dauntless, deathless, 

Sprang across them and stood steady. 

'Twas a moon-rainbow, vast and perfect, 

From heaven to heaven extending, perfect 

As the mother-moon's self, full in face. 

It rose, distinctly at the base 

With its seven proper colors chorded, 390 

Which still, in the rising, were compressed, 

Until at last they coalesced, 

And supreme the spectral creature lorded 

In a triumph of whitest white, — 

Above which intervened the night. 

But above night too, like only the next, 

The second of a wondrous sequence, 

Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, 

Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, 

Another rainbow rose, a mightier, 400 

Fainter, flushier, and flightier, — 

Rapture dying along its verge ! 

Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 41 

Whose, from the straining topmost dark, 
On to the keystone of that arc ? 

VII. 

This sight was shown me, there and then, — 

Me, one out of a world of men, 

Singled forth, as the chance might hap 

To another if, in a thunderclap 

Where I heard noise and you saw flame, 410 

Some one man knew God called his name. 

For me, I think I said, " Appear ! 

Good were it to be ever here. 

If Thou wilt, let me build to Thee 

Service-tabernacles three, 

Where, forever in Thy presence, 

In ecstatic acquiescence, 

Far alike from thriftless learning 

And ignorance's undiscerning, 

I may worship and remain ! " 420 

Thus at the show above me, gazing 

With upturned eyes, I felt my brain 

Glutted with the glory, blazing 

Throughout its whole mass, over and under, 

Until at length it burst asunder, 

And out of it bodily there streamed 

The too-much glory, as it seemed, 

Passing from out me to the ground, 

Then palely serpentining round 

Into the dark with mazy error. 430 



42 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

VIII. 

All at once I looked up with terror. 

He was there. 

He Himself with His human air, 

On the narrow pathway, just before. 

I saw the back of Him, no more — 

He had left the chapel, then, as I. 

I forgot all about the sky. 

No face : only the sight 

Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, 

With a hem that I could recognize. 440 

I felt terror, no surprise ; 

My mind filled with the cataract, 

At one bound, of the mighty fact. 

" I remember, He did say 

Doubtless, that, to this world's end, 

Where two or three should meet and pray, 

He would be in the midst, their friend ; 

Certainly He was there with them." 

And my pulses leaped for joy 

Of the golden thought without alloy, 450 

That I saw His very vesture's hem. 

Then rushed the blood back, cold and clear, 

With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear, 

And I hastened, cried out while I pressed 

To the salvation of the vest, 

" But not so, Lord ! It cannot be 

That Thou, indeed, art leaving me — 

Me, that have despised Thy friends ! 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 43 

Did my heart make no amends ? 

Thou art the love of God — above 460 

His power, didst hear me place His love, 

And that was leaving the world for Thee : 

Therefore Thou must not turn from me 

As if I had chosen the other part. 

Folly and pride o'ercame my heart. 

Our best is bad, nor bears Thy test ; 

Still, it should be our very best. 

I thought it best that Thou, the Spirit, 

Be worshipped in spirit and in truth, 

And in beauty, as even we require it — 470 

Not in the forms burlesque, uncouth, 

I left but now, as scarcely fitted 

For Thee : I knew not what I pitied. 

But, all I felt there, right or wrong, 

What is it to Thee, who curest sinning ? 

Am I not weak as Thou art strong ? 

I have looked to Thee from the beginning, 

Straight up to Thee through all the world 

Which, like an idle scroll, lay furled 

To nothingness on either side : 480 

And since the time Thou wast descried, 

Spite of the weak heart, so have I 

Lived ever, and so fain would die, 

Living and dying, Thee before ! 

But if Thou leavest me — " 



44 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

IX. 

Less or more, 
I suppose that I spoke thus. 
When, — have mercy, Lord, on us ! — 
The whole Face turned upon me full. 
And I spread myself beneath it, 490 

As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it 
In the cleansing sun, his wool, — 
Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness 
Some defiled, discolored web — 
So lay I, saturate with brightness. 
And when the flood appeared to ebb, 
Lo, I was walking, light and swift, 
With my senses settling fast and steadying, 
But my body caught up in the whirl and drift 
Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying 500 

On, just before me, still to be followed, 
As it carried me after with its motion : 
What shall I say ? — as a path were hollowed 
And a man went weltering through the ocean, 
Sucked along in the flying wake 
Of the luminous water-snake. 
Darkness and cold were cloven, as through 
I passed, upborne yet walking too. 
And I turned to myself at intervals, — 
" So He said, and so it befalls. 510 

God who registers the cup 
Of mere cold water, for His sake 
To a disciple rendered up, 
Disdains not His own thirst to slake 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 45 

At the poorest love was ever offered : 

And because it was my heart I proffered. 

With true love trembling at the brim, 

He suffers me to follow Him 

For ever, my own way, — dispensed 

From seeking to be influenced 520 

By all the less immediate ways 

That earth, in worships manifold, 

Adopts to reach, by prayer and praise, 

The garment's hem, which, lo, I hold ! " 

x. 

And so we crossed the world and stopped. 

For where am I, in city or plain, 

Since I am 'ware of the world again ? 

And what is this that rises propped 

With pillars of prodigious girth ? 530 

Is it really on the earth, 

This miraculous Dome of God ? 

Has the angel's measuring-rod 

Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, 

'Twixt the gates of the New Jerusalem, 

Meted it out, — and what he meted, 

Have the sons of men completed ? — 

Binding, ever as he bade, 

Columns in this colonnade 

With arms wide open to embrace 540 

The entry of the human race 

To the breast of . . . what is it, yon building, 

Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, 



46 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

With marble for brick, and stones of price 

For garniture of the edifice ? 

Now I see ; it is no dream ; 

It stands there and it does not seem : 

For ever, in pictures, thus it looks, 

And thus I have read of it in books 

Often in England, leagues away, 550 

And wondered how these fountains play, 

Growing up eternally, 

Each to a musical water-tree, 

Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, 

Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, 

To the granite lavers underneath. 

Liar and dreamer in your teeth ! 

I, the sinner that speak to you, 

Was in Rome this night, and stood, and knew 

Both this and more. For see, for see, 560 

The dark is rent, mine eye is free 

To pierce the crust of the outer wall, 

And I view inside, and all there, all, 

As the swarming hollow of a hive, 

The whole Basilica alive ! 

Men in the chancel, body, and nave, 

Men on the pillars' architrave, 

Men on the statues, men on the tombs 

With popes and kings in their porphyry wombs, 

All famishing in expectation 570 

Of the main-altar's consummation. 

For see, for see, the rapturous moment 

Approaches, and earth's best endowment 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 47 

Blends with heaven's ; the taper-fires 

Pant up, the winding brazen spires 

Heave loftier yet the baldachin ; 

The incense-gaspings, long kept in, 

Suspire in clouds ; the organ blatant 

Holds his breath and grovels latent, 

As if God's hushing finger grazed him 580 

(Like Behemoth when He praised him) 

At the silver bell's shrill tinkling, 

Quick cold drops of terror sprinkling 

On the sudden pavement strewed 

With faces of the multitude. 

Earth breaks up, time drops away, 

In flows heaven, with its new day 

Of endless life, when He who trod, 

Very man and very God, 

This earth in weakness, shame, and pain, 590 

Dying the death whose signs remain 

Up yonder on the accursed tree, — 

Shall come again, no more to be 

Of captivity the thrall, 

But the one God, All in all, 

King of kings, Lord of lords, 

As His servant John received the words, 

" I died, and live forevermore ! " 

XI. 

Yet I was left outside the door. 600 

" Why sit I here on the threshold-stone, 
Left till He return, alone 



48 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Save for the garment's extreme fold 

Abandoned still to bless my hold ? " 

My reason, to my doubt, replied, 

As if a book were opened wide, 

And at a certain page I traced 

Every record undefaced, 

Added by successive years, — 

The harvestings of truth's stray ears 6lo 

Singly gleaned, and in one sheaf 

Bound together for belief. 

" Yes," I said — " that He will go 

And sit with these in turn, I know. 

Their faith's heart beats, though her head swims 

Too giddily to guide her limbs, 

Disabled by their palsy-stroke 

From propping me. Though Rome's gross yoke 

Drops off, no more to be endured, 

Her teaching is not so obscured 620 

By errors and perversities, 

That no truth shines athwart the lies : 

And He, whose eye detects a spark 

Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark, — 

May well see flame where each beholder 

Acknowledges the embers smoulder. 

But I, a mere man, fear to quit 

The clue God gave me as most fit 

To guide my footsteps through life's maze, 

Because Himself discerns all ways 630 

Open to reach Him : I, a man 

Able to mark where faith began 



CHRISTMAS- EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 49 

To swerve aside, till from its summit 

Judgment drops her damning plummet, 

Pronouncing such a fatal space 

Departed from the Founder's base : 

He will not bid me enter too, 

But rather sit, as now I do, 

Awaiting His return outside." — 

'Twas thus my reason straight replied, 640 

And joyously I turned, and pressed 

The garment's skirt upon my breast, 

Until, afresh its light suffusing me, 

My heart cried, " What has been abusing me 

That I should wait here lonely and coldly, 

Instead of rising, entering boldly, 

Baring truth's face, and letting drift 

Her veils of lies as they choose to shift ? 

Do these men praise Him ? I will raise 

My voice up to their point of praise ! 6 S o 

I see the error ; but above 

The scope of error, see the love. — 

O, love of those first Christian days ! — 

Fanned so soon into a blaze, 

From the spark preserved by the trampled sect, 

That the antique sovereign Intellect 

Which then sat ruling in the world, 

Like a change in dreams, was hurled 

From the throne he reigned upon : — 

You looked up, and he was gone ! 660 

Gone, his glory of the pen ! — 

Love, with Greece and Rome in ken, 



50 CHRISTMAS-EVK AND EASTER-DAY. 

Bade her scribes abhor the trick 

Of poetry and rhetoric, 

And exult, with hearts set free, 

In blessed imbecility 

Scrawled, perchance, on some torn sheet, 

Leaving Sallust incomplete. 

Gone, his pride of sculptor, painter ! — 

Love, while able to acquaint her 670 

With the thousand statues yet 

Fresh from chisel, pictures wet 

From brush, she saw on every side, 

Chose rather with an infant's pride 

To frame those portents which impart 

Such unction to true Christian Art. 

Gone, music too ! The air was stirred 

By happy wings : Terpanders bird 

(That, when the cold came, fled away) — 

Would tarry not the wintry day, — 680 

As more-enduring sculpture must, 

Till filthy saints rebuked the gust 

With which they chanced to get a sight 

Of some dear naked Aphrodite 

They glanced a thought above the toes of, 

By breaking zealously her nose off. 

Love, surely, from that music's lingering, 

•Might have filched her organ-fingering, 

Nor chosen rather to set prayings 

To hog-grunts, praises to horse-neighings. 690 

Love was the startling thing, the new ; 

Love was the all-sufficient too : 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 5 1 

And seeing that, you see the rest : 

As a babe can find its mother's breast 

As well in darkness as in light, 

Love shut our eyes, and all seemed right. 

True, the world's eyes are open now : — 

Less need for me to disallow 

Some few that keep Love's zone unbuckled, 

Peevish as ever to be suckled, 700 

Lulled by the same old baby-prattle 

With intermixture of the rattle, 

When she would have them creep, stand steady 

Upon their feet, or walk already, 

Not to speak of trying to climb. 

I will be wise another time, 

And not desire a wall between us, 

When next I see a church-roof cover 

So many species of one genus, 

All with foreheads bearing lover 7™ 

Written above the earnest eyes of them ; 

All with breasts that beat for beauty, 

Whether sublimed, to the surprise of them, 

In noble daring, steadfast duty, 

The heroic in passion, or in action, — 

Or, lowered for senses' satisfaction, 

To the mere outside of human creatures, 

Mere perfect form and fautless features. 

What ? with all Rome here, whence to levy 

Such contributions to their appetite, 720 

With women and men in a gorgeous bevy, 

They take, as it were, a padlock, clap it tight 



52 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

On their southern eyes, restrained from feeding 
On the glories of their ancient reading, 
On the beauties of their modern singing, 
On the wonders of the builder's bringing, 
On the majesties of Art around them, — 
And, all these loves, late struggling incessant, 
When faith has at last united and bound them, 
They offer up to God for a present ? 730 

Why, I will, on the whole, be rather proud of it, — 
And, only taking the act in reference 
To the other recipients who might have allowed of it, 
I will rejoice that God had the preference." 

XII. 

So I summed up my new resolves : 

" Too much love there can never be. 

And where the intellect devolves 

Its function on love exclusively, 

I, a man who possesses both, 740 

Will accept the provision, nothing loth, — 

Will feast my love, then depart elsewhere, 

That my intellect may find its share. 

And ponder, O soul, the while thou departest, 

And see thou applaud the great heart of the artist, 

Who, examining the capabilities 

Of the block of marble he has to fashion 

Into a type of thought or passion, — 

Not always, using obvious facilities, 

Shapes it, as any artist can, 750 

Into a perfect symmetrical man, 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 53 

Complete from head to foot of the life-size, 

Such as old Adam stood in his wife's eyes, — 

But, now and then, bravely aspires to consummate 

A Colossus by no means so easy to come at, 

And uses the whole of his block for the bust, 

Leaving the mind of the public to finish it, 

Since cut it ruefully short he must : 

On the face alone he expends his devotion, 759 

He rather would mar than resolve to diminish it, — 

Saying, 'Applaud me of this grand notion 

Of what a face may be ! As for completing it, 

In breast and body and limbs, do that, you ! ' 

All hail ! I fancy how, happily meeting it, 

A trunk and legs would perfect the statue, 

Could man carve so as to answer volition. 

And how much nobler than petty cavils, 

Were a hope to find, in my spirit-travels, 

Some artist of another ambition, 

Who having a block to carve, no bigger, 770 

Has spent his power on the opposite quest, 

And belived to begin at the feet was best — 

For so may I see, ere I die, the whole figure ! " 

XIII. 

No sooner said than out in the night ! 

My heart beat lighter and more light : 

And still, as before, I was walking swift, 

With my senses settling fast and steadying, 

But my body caught up in the whirl and drift 

Of the vesture's amplitude, still eddying 780 



54 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTKR-DAY. 

On just before me, still to be followed, 
As it carried me after with its motion, — 
What shall I say ? — as a path were hollowed, 
And a man went weltering through the ocean, 
Sucked along in the flying wake 
Of the luminous water-snake. 

XIV. 

Alone ! I am left alone once more — 

(Save for the garment's extreme fold 

Abandoned still to bless my hold) 79° 

Alone, beside the entrance-door 

Of a sort of temple, — perhaps a college, — 

Like nothing I ever saw before 

At home in England, to my knowledge. 

The tall, old, quaint, irregular town ! 

It may be . . though which, I can't affirm . . any 

Of the famous middle-age towns of Germany ; 

And this flight of stairs where I sit down, 

Is it Halle, Weimar, Cassel, or Frankfort, 

Or Gottingen, that I have to thank for 't ? 800 

It may be Gottingen, — most likely. 

Through the open door I catch obliquely 

Glimpses of a lecture-hall ; 

And not a bad assembly neither — 

Ranged decent and symmetrical 

On benches, waiting what 's to see there ; 

Which, holding still by the vesture's hem, 

I also resolve to see with them, 

Cautious this time how I suffer to slip 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 55 

The chance of joining in fellowship 810 

With any that call themselves His friends, 

As these folks do, I have a notion. 

But hist — a buzzing and emotion ! 

All settle themselves, the while ascends 

By the creaking rail to the lecture-desk, 

Step by step, deliberate 

Because of his cranium's over-freight, 

Three parts sublime to one grotesque, 

If I have proved an accurate guesser, 

The hawk-nosed, high-cheek-boned Professor. 820 

I felt at once as if there ran 

A shoot of love from my heart to the man — 

That sallow, virgin-minded, studious 

Martyr to mild enthusiasm, 

As he uttered a kind of cough-preludious 

That woke my sympathetic spasm, 

(Beside some spitting that made me sorry) 

And stood, surveying his auditory 

With a wan pure look, well-nigh celestial, — 

Those blue eyes had survived so much ! 830 

While, under the foot they could not smutch, 

Lay all the fleshly and the bestial. 

Over he bowed, and arranged his notes, 

Till the auditory's clearing of throats 

Was done with, died into a silence ; 

And, when each glance was upward sent, 

Each bearded mouth composed intent, 

And a pin might be heard drop half a mile hence, — 

He pushed back higher his spectacles, 



56 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Let the eyes stream out like lamps from cells, 3 4 o 

And giving his head of hair — a hake 

Of undressed tow, for color and quantity — 

One rapid and impatient shake, 

(As our own young England adjusts a jaunty tie 

When about to impart, on mature digestion, 

Some thrilling view of the surplice-question) — 

The Professor's grave voice, sweet though hoarse, 

Broke into his Christmas-Eve discourse. 

XV. 
And he began it by observing 850 

How reason dictated that men 
Should rectify the natural swerving, 
By a reversion, now and then, 
To the well-heads of knowledge, few 
And far away, whence rolling grew 
The life-stream wide whereat we drink, 
Commingled, as we needs must think, 
With waters alien to the source ; 
To do which, aimed this eve's discourse : 
Since, where could be a fitter time 860 

For tracing backward to its prime, 
This Christianity, this lake, 
This reservoir, whereat we slake, 
From one or other bank, our thirst ? 
So, he proposed inquiring first 
Into the various sources whence 
This Myth of Christ is derivable ; 
Demanding from the evidence 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 57 

v Since plainly no such life was liveable) 

How these phenomena should class ? 870 

Whether 't were best opine Christ was, 

Or never was at all, or whether 

He was and was not, both together — 

It matters little for the name, 

So the idea be left the same. 

Only, for practical purpose' sake 

'T was obviously as well to take 

The popular story, — understanding 

How the ineptitude of the time, 

And the penman's prejudice, expanding 880 

Fact into fable fit for the clime, 

Had, by slow and sure degrees, translated it 

Into this myth, this Individuum, — 

Which, when reason had strained and abated it 

Of foreign matter, left, for residuum, 

A Man ! — a right true man, however, 

Whose work was worthy a man's endeavor ; 

Work, that gave warrant almost sufficient 

To his disciples, for rather believing 

He was just omnipotent and omniscient, 890 

As it gives to us, for as frankly receiving 

His word, their tradition, — which, though it meant 

Something entirely different 

From all that those who only heard it, 

In their simplicity thought and averred it, 

Had yet a meaning quite as respectable : 

For, among other doctrines delectable, 

Was he not surely the first to insist on 



58 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

The natural sovereignty of our race ? — 

Here the lecturer came to a pausing-place. 900 

And while his cough, like a drouthy piston, 

Tried to dislodge the husk that grew to him, 

I seized the occasion of bidding adieu to him, 

The vesture still within my hand. 

XVI. 
I could interpret its command. 
This time He would not bid me enter 
The exhausted air-bell of the Critic. 
Truth's atmosphere may grow mephitic 
When Papist struggles with Dissenter, 910 

Impregnating its pristine clarity, — 
One, by his daily fare's vulgarity, 
Its gust of broken meat and garlic ; — 
One, by his soul's too-much presuming 
To turn the frankincense's fuming 
And vapors of the candle starlike 
Into the cloud her wings she buoys on. 
Each, that thus sets the pure air seething, 
May poison it for healthy breathing — 
But the Critic leaves no air to poison ; 920 

Pumps out with ruthless ingenuity 
Atom by atom, and leaves you — vacuity. 
Thus much of Christ, does he reject ? 
And what retain ? His intellect ? 
What is it I must reverence duly ? 
Poor intellect for worship, truly, 
Which tells me simply what was told 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 59 

(If mere morality, bereft 

Of the God in Christ, be all that 's left) 

Elsewhere by voices manifold ; 930 

With this advantage, that the stater 

Made nowise the important stumble 

Of adding, he, the sage and humble, 

Was also one with the Creator. 

You urge Christ's followers' simplicity : 

But how does shifting blame, evade it ? 

Have wisdom's words no more felicity ? 

The stumbling-block, His speech — who laid it? 

How comes it that for one found able 

To sift the truth of it from fable, 940 

Millions believe it to the letter ? 

Christ's goodness, then — does that fare better ? 

Strange goodness, which upon the score 

Of being goodness, the mere due 

Of man to fellow-man, much more 

To God, — should take another view 

Of its possessor's privilege, 

And bid him rule his race ! You pledge 

Your fealty to such rule ? What, all — 

From heavenly John and Attic Paul, 950 

And that brave weather-battered Peter 

Whose stout faith only stood completer 

For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, 

As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened, — 

All, down to you, the man of men, 

Professing here at Gottingen, 

Compose Christ's flock ! They, you, and I 



60 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Are sheep of a good man ! and why ? 

The goodness, — how did he acquire it ? 

Was it self-gained, did God inspire it ? 960 

Choose which ; then tell me, on what ground 

Should its possessor dare propound 

His claim to rise o'er us an inch ? 

Were goodness all some man's invention, 

Who arbitrarily made mention 

What we should follow, and whence flinch, — 

What qualities might take the style 

Of right and wrong, — and had such guessing 

Met with as general acquiescing 

As graced the alphabet ere while, 970 

When A got leave an Ox to be, 

No Camel (quoth the Jews) like G, — 

For thus inventing thing and title 

Worship were that man's fit requital. 

But if the common conscience must 

Be ultimately judge, adjust 

Its apt name to each quality 

Already known, — I would decree 

Worship for such mere demonstration 

And simple work of nomenclature, 9^0 

Only the day I praised, not nature, 

But Harvey, for the circulation. 

I would praise such a Christ, with pride 

And joy, that He, as none beside, 

Had taught us how to keep the mind 

God gave Him, as God gave His kind 

Freer than they from fleshly taint : 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 6 1 

I would call such a Christ our Saint, 

As I declare our Poet, him 

Whose insight makes all others dim : 990 

A thousand poets pried at life, 

And only one amid the strife 

Rose to be Shakespeare : each shall take 

His crown, I 'd say, for the world's sake — 

Though some objected — " Had we seen 

The heart and head of each, what screen 

Was broken there to give them light, 

While in ourselves it shuts the sight, 

We should no more admire, perchance, 

That these found truth out at a glance, 1000 

Than marvel how the bat discerns 

Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns, 

Led by a finer tact, a gift 

He boasts, which other birds must shift 

Without, and grope as best they can." 

No, freely I would praise the man, — 

Nor one whit more, if he contended 

That gift of his, from God, descended. 

Ah, friend, what gift of man's does not ? 

No nearer something, by a jot, 1010 

Rise an infinity of nothings 

Than one : take Euclid for your teacher ; 

Distinguish kinds : do crownings, clothings, 

Make that Creator which was creature ? 

Multiply gifts upon man's head, 

And what, when all 's done, shall be said 

But — the more gifted he, I ween! 



62 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

That one 's made Christ, this other, Pilate, 

And this might be all that has been, — 

So what is there to frown or smile at ? 1020 

What is left for us, save, in growth 

Of soul, to rise up, far past both, 

From the gift looking to the Giver, 

And from the cistern to the river, 

And from the finite to infinity, 

And from man's dust to God's divinity ? 

XVII. 

Take all in a word : the truth in God's breast 

Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed : 

Though He is so bright and we so dim, 1030 

We are made in His image to witness Him : 

And were no eye in us to tell, 

Instructed by no inner sense, 

The light of heaven from the dark of hell, 

That light would want its evidence, — 

Though justice, good, and truth were still 

Divine, if, by some demon's will, 

Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed 

Law through the worlds, and right misnamed. 

No mere exposition of morality 1040 

Made or in part or in totality, 

Should win you to give it worship, therefore : 

And, if no better proof you will care for, — 

Whom do you count the worst man upon earth ? 

Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more 

Of what right is, than arrives at birth 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 63 

In the best man's acts that we bow before : 

This last knows better — true, but my fact is, 

'T is one thing to know, and another to practise. 

And thence I conclude that the real God-function 1050 

Is to furnish a motive and injunction 

For practising what we know already. 

And such an injunction and such a motive 

As the God in Christ, do you waive, and " heady, 

High-minded," hang your tablet- votive 

Outside the fane on a finger-post ? 

Morality to the uttermost, 

Supreme in Christ as we all confess, 

Why need we prove would avail no jot 

To make Him God, if God He were not? 1060 

What is the point where Himself lays stress ? 

Does the precept run, " Believe in good, 

In justice, truth, now understood 

For the first time"? — or, " Believe in Me, 

Who lived and died, yet essentially 

Am Lord of Life " ? Whoever can take 

The same to his heart and for mere love's sake 

Conceive of the love, — that man obtains 

A new truth ; no conviction gains 

Of an old one only, made intense 1070 

By a fresh appeal to his faded sense. 

XVIII. 

" Can it be that He stays inside ? 

Is the vesture left me to commune with ? 

Could my soul find aught to sing in tune with 



64 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Even at this lecture, if she tried ? 

Oh, let me at lowest sympathize 

With the lurking drop of blood that lies 

In the desiccated brain's white roots 

Without a throb for Christ's attributes, 

As the lecturer makes his special boast ! 

If love 's dead there, it has left a ghost. 

Admire we, how from heart to brain 

(Though to say so strike the doctors dumb) 

One instinct rises and falls again, 

Restoring the equilibrium. 

And how when the Critic had done his best, 

And the pearl of price, at reason's test, 

Lay dust and ashes levigable 

On the Professor's lecture-table, — 

When we looked for the inference and monition 

That our faith, reduced to such a condition, 

Be swept forthwith to its natural dust-hole, — 

He bids us, when we least expect it, 

Take back our faith, — if it be not just whole, 

Yet a pearl indeed, as his tests affect it, 

Which fact pays damage done rewardingly, 

So, prize we our dust and ashes accordingly ! 

1 Go home and venerate the Myth 

I thus have experimented with — 

This Man, continue to adore Him 

Rather than all who went before Him, 

And all who ever followed after ! ' — 

Surely for this I may praise you, my brother ! 

Will you take the praise in tears or laughter ? 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 65 

That 's one point gained : can I compass another ? 

Unlearned love was safe from spurning — 

Can't we respect your loveless learning ? 

Let us at least give learning honor ! 

What laurels had we showered upon her, mo 

Girding her loins up to perturb 

Our theory of the Middle Verb ; 

Or Turk-like brandishing a scimitar 

O'er anapaests in comic-trimeter ; 

Or curing the halt and maimed ' Iketides, ' 

While we lounged on at our indebted ease : 

Instead of which, a tricksy demon 

Sets her at Titus or Philemon ! 

When ignorance wags his ears of leather 

And hates God's word, 't is altogether ; 1120 

Nor leaves he his congenial thistles 

To go and browse on Paul's Epistles. — 

And you, the audience, who might ravage 

The world wide, enviably savage, 

Nor heed the cry of the retriever, 

More than Herr Heine (before his fever), — 

I do not tell a lie so arrant 

As say my passion's wings are furled up, 

And, without plainest heavenly warrant, 

I were ready and glad to give the world up — "30 

But still, when you rub the brow meticulous, 

And ponder the profit of turning holy 

If not for God's, for your own sake solely, — 

God forbid I should find you ridiculous ! 

Deduce from this lecture all that eases you, 



66 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Nay, call yourselves, if the calling pleases you, 

' Christians,' — abhor the deist's pravity, — 

Go on, you shall no more move my gravity, 

Than, when I see boys ride a-cockhorse 

I find it in my heart to embarrass them 1140 

By hinting that their stick 's a mock horse, 

And thety really carry what they say carries them." 

XIX. 
So sat I talking with my mind. 
I did not long to leave the door 
And find a new church, as before, 
But rather was quiet and inclined 
To prolong and enjoy the gentle resting 
From further tracking and trying and testing. 
"This tolerance is a genial mood ! " 115° 

(Said I, and a little pause ensued). 
" One trims the bark 'twixt shoal and shelf, 
And sees, each side, the good effects of it, 
A value for religion's self, 
A carelessness about the sects of it. 
Let me enjoy my own conviction, 
Not watch my neighbor's faith with fretfulness 
Still spying there some dereliction 
Of truth, perversity, forgetfulness ! 
Better a mild indifferentism, n6o 

Teaching that all our faiths (though duller 
His shine through a dull spirit's prism) 
Originally had one color ! 
Better pursue a pilgrimage 



CHRISTMAS-KVK AND EASTER-DAY. 67 

Through ancient and through modern times 
To many peoples, various climes, 
Where I may see saint, savage, sage, 
Fuse their respective creeds in one 
Before the general Father's throne ! " — 

XX. 

'T was the horrible storm began afresh ! 

The black night caught me in his mesh 

Whirled me up, and flung me prone. 

I was left on the college-step alone. 

I looked, and far there, ever fleeting 

Far, far away, the receding gesture, 

And looming of the lessening vesture ! — 

Swept forward from my stupid hand, 

While I watched my foolish heart expand 

In the lazy glow of benevolence, il8 ° 

O'er the various modes of man's belief. 

I sprang up with fear's vehemence. — 

" Needs must there be one way, our chief 

Best way of worship : let me strive 

To find it, and when found, contrive 

My fellows also take their share ! 

This constitutes my earthly care : 

God's is above it and distinct. 

For I, a man, with men am linked, 

And not a brute with brutes ; no gain «9° 

That I experience, must remain 

Unshared : but should my best endeavor 

To share it, fail — subsisteth ever 



68 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

God's care above, and I exult 

That God, by God's own ways occult, 

May — doth, I will believe — bring back 

All wanderers to a single track. 

Meantime, I can but testify 

God's care for me — no more, can I — 

It is but for myself I know : 

The world rolls witnessing around me 

Only to leave me as it found me ; 

Men cry there, but my ear is slow : 

Their races flourish or decay — 

What boots it, while yon lucid way 

Loaded with stars, divides the vault ? 

But soon my soul repairs its fault 

When, sharpening sense's hebetude, 

She turns on my own life ! So viewed, 

No mere mote's-breadth but teems immense 

With witnessings of Providence : 

And woe to me if when I look 

Upon that record, the sole book 

Unsealed to me, I take no heed 

Of any warning that I read ! 

Have I been sure, this Christmas-Eve, 

God's own hand did the rainbow weave, 

Whereby the truth from heaven slid 

Into my soul ? — I cannot bid 

The world admit He stooped to heal 

My soul, as if in a thunder-peal 

Where one heard noise, and one saw flame, 

I only knew He named my name ; 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 69 

But what is the world to me, for sorrow 

Or joy in its censure, when to-morrow 

It drops the remark, with just-turned head, 

Then, on again, ' That man is dead ' ? 

Yes, but for me — my name called, — drawn 

As a conscript's lot from the lap's black yawn, 

He has dipt into on a battle-dawn : 1230 

Bid out of life by a nod, a glance, — 

Stumbling, mute-mazed, at nature's chance, — 

With a rapid finger circled round, 

Fixed to the first poor inch of ground 

To fight from, where his foot was found ; 

Whose ear but a minute since lay free 

To the wide camp's buzz and gossipry — 

Summoned, a solitary man, 

To end his life where his life began, 

From the safe glad rear, to the dreadful van ! 1240 

Soul of mine, hadst thou caught and held 

By the hem of the vesture ! " — 

XXI. 

And I caught 
At the flying robe, and unrepelled 
Was lapped again in its folds full-fraught 
With warmth and wonder and delight, 
God's mercy being infinite. 
For scarce had the words escaped my tongue, 
When, at a passionate bound, I sprung, 
Out of the wandering world of rain, 1250 

Into the little chapel again. 



70 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

XXII. 

How else was I found there, bolt upright 

On my bench, as if I had never left it ? — 

Never flung out on the common at night 

Nor met the storm and wedge-like cleft it, 

Seen the raree-show of Peter's successor, 

Or the laboratory of the Professor ! 

For the Vision, that was true, I wist, 

True as that heaven and earth exist. 1260 

There sat my friend, the yellow and tall, 

With his neck and its wen in the selfsame place ; 

Yet my nearest neighbor's cheek showed gall, 

She had slid away a contemptuous space : 

And the old fat woman, late so placable. 

Eyed me with symptoms, hardly mistakable, 

Of her milk of kindness turning rancid. 

In short a spectator might have fancied 

That I had nodded betrayed by slumber, 

Yet kept my seat, a warning ghastly, 1270 

Through the heads of the sermon, nine in number, 

And woke up now at the tenth and lastly. 

But again, could such a disgrace have happened? 

Each friend at my elbow had surely nudged it ; 

And, as for the sermon, where did my nap end ? 

Unless I heard it, could I have judged it ? 

Could I report as I do at the close, 

First, the preacher speaks through his nose : 

Second, his gesture is too emphatic : 

Thirdly, to wave what 's pedagogic, 1280 

The subject-matter itself lacks logic : 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 71 

Fourthly, the English is ungrammatic. 

Great news ! the preacher is found no Pascal, 

Whom, if I pleased, I might to the task call 

Of making square to a finite eye 

The circle of infinity, 

And find so all-but-just-succeeding ! 

Great news ! the sermon proves no reading 

Where bee-like in the flowers I may bury me, 

Like Taylor's, the immortal Jeremy ! 1290 

And now that I know the very worst of him, 

What was it I thought to obtain at first of him 

Ha ! Is God mocked, as He asks ? 

Shall I take on me to change His tasks, 

And dare, dispatched to a river-head 

For a simple draught of the element, 

Neglect the thing for which He sent, 

And return with another thing instead ? — 

Saying, " Because the water found 

Welling up from underground, 1300 

Is mingled with the taints of earth, 

While Thou, I know, dost laugh at dearth, 

And couldst, at wink or word, convulse 

The world with the leap of a river-pulse, — 

Therefore I turned from the oozings muddy, 

And bring thee a chalice I found, instead : 

See the brave veins in the breccia ruddy ! 

One would suppose that the marble bled. 

What matters the water ? A hope I have nursed, 

The waterless cup will quench my thirst." — 1310 

Better have knelt at the poorest stream 



72 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

That trickles in pain from the straitest rift ! 

For the less or the more is all God's gift, 

Who blocks up or breaks wide the granite-seam. 

And here, is there water or not, to drink ? 

I, then, in ignorance and weakness, 

Taking God's help, have attained to think 

My heart does best to receive in meekness 

That mode of worship, as most to His mind, 

Where earthly aids being cast behind, 1320 

His All in All appears serene 

With the thinnest human veil between, 

Letting the mystic lamps, the seven, 

The many motions of His spirit, 

Pass, as they list, to earth from heaven. 

For the preacher's merit or demerit, 

It were to be wished the flaws were fewer 

In the earthen vessel, holding treasure, 

Which lies as safe in a golden ewer ; 1329 

But the main thing is, does it hold good measure ? 

Heaven soon sets right all other matters ! — 

Ask, else, these ruins of humanity, 

This flesh worn out to rags and tatters, 

This soul at struggle with insanity, 

Who thence take comfort, (can I doubt ?) 

Which an empire gained, were a loss without. 

May it be mine ! And let us hope 

That no worse blessing befall the Pope, 

Turn'd sick at last of the day's buffoonery, 

Of posturings and petticoatings, 1340 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 73 

Beside his Bourbon bully's gloatings 

In the bloody orgies of drunk poltroonery ! 

Nor may the Professor forego its peace 

At Gottingen, presently, when, in the dusk 

Of his life, if his cough, as I fear, should increase 

Prophesied of by that horrible husk ; — 

When thicker and thicker the darkness fills 

The world through his misty spectacles, 

And he gropes for something more substantial 

Than a fable, myth, or personification, — 1350 

May Christ do for him, what no mere man shall, 

And stand confessed as the God of salvation ! 

Meantime, in the still recurring fear 

Lest myself, at unawares, be found, 

While attacking the choice of my neighbors round, 

With none of my own made — I choose here ! 

The giving out of the hymn reclaims me ; 

I have done : and if any blames me, 

Thinking that merely to touch in brevity 

The topics I dwell on, were unlawful, — 1360 

Or worse, that I trench, with undue levity, 

On the bounds of the holy and the awful, — 

I praise the heart, and pity the head of him, 

And refer myself to Thee, instead of him, 

Who head and heart alike discernest, 

Looking below light speech we utter 

When frothy spume and frequent sputter 

Prove that the soul's depths boil in earnest ! 

May the truth shine out, stand ever before us ! 



74 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

I put up pencil and join chorus 1370 

To Hepzibah Tune, without further apology, 
The last five verses of the third section 
Of the seventeenth hymn of Whitfield's Collection, 
To conclude with the doxology. 



EASTER-DAY. 



i. 

How very hard it is to be 

A Christian ! Hard for you and me, — 

Not the mere task of making real 

That duty up to its ideal, 

Effecting thus, complete and whole, 

A purpose of the human soul — 

For that is always hard to do ; 

But hard, I mean, for me and you 

To realize it, more or less, 

With even the moderate success 

Which commonly repays our strife 

To carry out the aims of life. 

" This aim is greater," you will say, 

" And so more arduous every way." — 

But the importance of their fruits 

Still proves to man, in all pursuits, 

Proportional encouragement. 

" Then, what if it be God's intent 

That labor to this one result 

Should seem unduly difficult ? " 

Ah, that's a question in the dark — 

And the sole thing that I remark 

Upon the difficulty, this ; 

We do not see it where it is, 

At the beginning of the race : 



75 



76 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

As we proceed, it shifts its place, 

And where we looked for crowns to fall, 

We find the tug 's to come, — that 's all. 

II. 

At first you say, " The whole, or chief 

Of difficulties, is belief. 30 

Could I believe once thoroughly, 

The rest were simple. What ? Am I 

An idiot, do you think, — a beast ? 

Prove to me, only that the least 

Command of God is God's indeed, 

And what injunction shall I need 

To pay obedience ? Death so nigh, 

When time must end, eternity 

Begin, — and cannot I compute, 

Weigh loss and gain together, suit 40 

My actions to the balance drawn, 

And give my body to be sawn 

Asunder, hacked in pieces, tied 

To horses, stoned, burned, crucified, 

Like any martyr of the list ? 

How gladly ! — if I made acquist, 

Through the brief minute's fierce annoy, 

Of God's eternity of joy." 

in. 
And certainly you name the point 
Whereon all turns : for could you joint 50 

This flexile finite life once tight 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 77 

Into the fixed and infinite, 

You, safe inside, would spurn what 's out, 

With carelessness enough, no doubt — 

Would spurn mere life : but when time brings 

To their next stage your reasonings, 

Your eyes, late wide, begin to wink 

Nor see the path so well, I think. 

IV. 

You say, " Faith may be, one agrees, 

A touchstone for God's purposes, 60 

Even as ourselves conceive of them. 

Could He acquit us or condemn 

For holding what no hand can loose, 

Rejecting when we can't but choose ? 

As well award the victor's wreath 

To whosoever should take breath 

Duly each minute while he lived — 

Grant heaven, because a man contrived 

To see its sunlight every day 

He walked forth on the public way. 7° 

You must mix some uncertainty 

With faith, if you would have faith be. 

Why, what but faith, do we abhor 

And idolize each other for — 

Faith in our evil, or our good, 

Which is or is not understood 

Aright by those we love or those 

We hate, thence called our friends or foes ? 

Your mistress saw your spirit's grace, 



7.8 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

When, turning from the ugly face, 80 

I found belief in it too hard ; 

And she and I have our reward. — 

Yet here a doubt peeps : well for us 

Weak beings, to go using thus 

A touchstone for our little ends, 

Trying with faith the foes and friends ; — 

But God, bethink you ! I would fain 

Conceive of the Creator's reign 

As based upon exacter laws 

Than creatures build by with applause. 90 

In all God's acts — (as Plato cries 

He doth) — He should geometrize. 

Whence, I desiderate ..." 

V. 

I see ! 
You would grow as a natural tree, 
Stand as a rock, soar up like fire. 
The world 's so perfect and entire, 
Quite above faith, so right and fit ! 
Go there, walk up and down in it ! 
No. The creation travails, groans — 
Contrive your music from its moans, 100 

Without or let or hindrance, friend ! 
That 's an old story, and its end 
As old — you come back (be sincere) 
With every question you put here 
(Here where there once was, and is still. 
We think, a living oracle, 



CHRISTMAS- EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 79 

Whose answers you stand carping at) 

This time flung back unanswered flat, — 

Beside, perhaps, as many more 

As those that drove you out before, «o 

Now added, where was little need ! 

Questions impossible, indeed, 

To us who sat still, all and each 

Persuaded that our earth had speech 

Of God's, writ down, no matter if 

In cursive type or hieroglyph, — 

Which one fact freed us from the yoke 

Of guessing why He never spoke,. 

You come back in no better plight 

Than when you left us, — am I right? 120 

VI. 

So, the old process, I conclude, 

Goes on, the reasoning 's pursued 

Further. You own, " 'T is well averred, 

A scientific faith 's absurd, — 

Frustrates the very end 't was meant 

To serve. So, I would rest content 

With a mere probability, 

But, probable ; the chance must lie 

Clear on one side, — lie all in rough, 

So long as there be just enough 130 

To pin my faith to, though it hap 

Only at points : from gap to gap 

One hangs up a huge curtain so, 

Grandly, nor seeks to have it go 



80 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Foldless and flat along the wall. 

What care I if some interval 

Of life less plainly may depend 

On God ? I 'd hang there to the end ; 

And thus I should not find it hard 

To be a Christian and debarred ho 

From trailing on the earth, till furled 

Away by death. — Renounce the world ! 

Were that a mighty hardship ? Plan 

A pleasant life, and straight some man 

Beside you, with, if he thought fit, 

Abundant means to compass it, 

Shall turn deliberate aside 

To try and live as, if you tried 

You clearly might, yet most despise. 

One friend of mine wears out his eyes, 150 

Slighting the stupid joys of sense, 

In patient hope that, ten years hence, 

1 Somewhat completer,' he may say, 

' My list of coleoptera /' 

While just the other who most laughs 

At him, above all epitaphs 

Asprres to have his tomb describe 

Himself as sole among the tribe 

Of snuffbox-fanciers, who possessed 

A Grignon with the Regent's crest. 160 

So that, subduing, as you want, 

Whatever stands predominant 

Among my earthly appetites 

For tastes and smells and sounds and sights, 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 8 1 

I shall be doing that alone, 

To gain a palm-branch and a throne, 

Which fifty people undertake 

To do, and gladly, for the sake 

Of giving a Semitic guess, 

Or playing pawns at blindfold chess." 170 

VII. 

Good ! and the next thing is, — look round 

For evidence enough. 'T is found, 

No doubt : as is your sort of mind, 

So is your sort of search : you '11 find 

What you desire, and that 's to be 

A Christian. What says history ? 

How comforting a point it were 

To find some mummy-scrap declare 

There lived a Moses ! Better still, 

Prove Jonah's whale translatable 180 

Into some quicksand of the seas, 

Isle, cavern, rock, or what you please, 

That faith might clap her wings and crow 

From such an eminence ! Or, no — 

The human heart 's best ; you prefer 

Making that prove the minister 

To truth ; you probe its wants and needs, 

And hopes and fears, then try what creeds 

Meet these most aptly, — resolute 

That faith plucks such substantial fruit 190 

Wherever these two correspond, 

She little needs to look beyond, 



82 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

And puzzle out who Orpheus was, 

Or Dionysius Zagjrias. .- . * 

You '11 find sufficient, as I say, 

To satisfy you either way ; 

You wanted to believe ; your pains 

Are crowned — you do : and what remains ? 

" Renounce the world ! " — Ah, were it done 

By merely cutting one by one 

Your limbs off, with your wise head last, 

How easy were it ! — how soon past, 

If once in the believing mood ! 

11 Such is man's usual gratitude, 

Such thanks to God do we return, 

For not exacting that we spurn 

A single gift of life, forego 

One real gain, — only taste them so 

With gravity and temperance, 

That those mild virtues may enhance 

Such pleasures, rather than abstract — 

Last spice of which, will be the fact 

Of love discerned in every gift ; 

While, when the scene of life shall shift, 

And the gay heart be taught to ache, 

As sorrows and privations take 

The place of joy, — the thing that seems 

Mere misery, under human schemes, 

Becomes, regarded by the light 

Of love, as very near, or quite 

As good a gift as joy before. 

So plain is it that, all the more 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 83 

God's dispensation 's merciful, 

More pettishly we try and cull 

Briers, thistles, from our private plot, 

To mar God's ground where thorns are not ! " 

VIII. 
Do you say this, or I ? — Oh, you ! 
Then, what, my friend ? — (thus I pursue 
Our parley) — you indeed opine 
That the Eternal and Divine 230 

Did, eighteen centuries ago, 
In very truth . . . Enough ! you know 
The all-stupendous tale, — that Birth, 
That Life, that Death ! And all, the earth 
Shuddered at, — all, the heavens grew black 
Rather than see ; all, nature's rack 
And throe at dissolution's brink 
Attested, — all took place, you think, 
Only to give our joys a zest, 

And prove our sorrows for the best ? 240 

We differ, then ! Were I, still pale 
And heartstruck at the dreadful tale, 
Waiting to hear God's voice declare 
What horror followed for my share, 
As implicated in the deed, 
Apart from other sins, — concede 
That if He blacked out in a blot 
My brief life's pleasantness, 't were not 
So very disproportionate ! 
Or there might be another fate — 250 



84 CHRISTMAS-KVK AND KASTER-DAY. 

I certainly could understand 

(If fancies were the thing in hand) 
How God might save, at that day's price, 
The impure in their impurities, 
Give formal license and complete 
To choose the fair and pick the sweet. 
But there be certain words, broad, plain, 
Uttered again and yet again, 
Hard to mistake, or overgloss — 
Announcing this world's gain for loss, 
And bidding us reject the same : 
The whole world lieth (they proclaim) 
In wickedness, — come out of it ! 
Turn a deaf ear, if you think fit, 
But I who thrill through every nerve 
At thought of what deaf ears deserve, — 
How do you counsel in the case ? 

IX. 

" I 'd take, by all means, in your place, 
The safe side, since it so appears : 
Deny myself, a few brief years, 
The natural pleasure, leave the fruit 
Or cut the plant up by the root. 
Remember what a martyr said 
On the rude tablet overhead ! 

I I was born sickly, poor and mean, 
A slave : no misery could screen 
The holders of the pearl of price 
From Cassar's envy ; therefore twice 



CHRISTMAS-EVB AND KASTER-DAY. 85 

I fought with beasts, and three times saw 

My children suffer by his law ; 280 

At last my own release was earned : 

I was some time in being burned, 

But at the close a Hand came through 

The fire above my head, and drew 

My soul to Christ, whom now I see. 

Sergius, a brother, writes for me 

This testimony on the wall — 

For me, I have forgot it all.' 

You say right ; this were not so hard ! 

And since one nowise is debarred 290 

From this, why not escape some sins 

By such a method ? " 

x. 

Then begins 
To the old point, revulsion new — 
(For 't is just this, I bring you to) 
If after all we should mistake, 
And so renounce life for the sake 
Of death and nothing else ? You hear 
Our friends we jeered at, send the jeer 
Back to ourselves with good effect — 
" There were my beetles to collect ! " 300 

" My box — a trifle, I confess, 
But here I hold it, ne'ertheless ! " 
Poor idiots, (let us pluck up heart 
And answer) we, the better part 
Have chosen, though 't were only hope, — 



86 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Nor envy moles like you that grope 

Amid your veritable muck, 

More than the grasshoppers would truck, 

For yours, their passionate life away, 

That spends itself in leaps all day 31° 

To reach the sun, you want the eyes 

To see, as they the wings to rise 

And match the noble hearts of them ! 

Thus the contemner we contemn, — 

And, when doubt strikes us, thus we ward 

Its stroke off, caught upon our guard, — 

Not struck enough to overturn 

Our faith, but shake it — make us learn 

What I began with, and, I wis, 

End, having proved, — how hard it is 320 

To be a Christian ! 

XI. 

" Proved, or not, 
Howe'er you wis, small thanks, I wot, 
You get of mine, for taking pains 
To make it hard to me. Who gains 
By that, I wonder ? Here I live 
In trusting ease ; and here you drive 
At causing me to lose what most 
Yourself would mourn for, had you lost ! " 



XII. 



But, do you see, my friend, that thus 
You leave St. Paul for yEschylus ? — 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 87 

Who made his Titan's arch-device 

The giving men blind hopes to spice 

The meal of life with, else devoured 

In bitter haste, while lo, death loured 

Before them at the platter's edge ! 

If faith should be, as I allege, 

Quite other than a condiment 

To heighten flavors with, or meant 

(Like that brave curry of his Grace) 

To take at need the victuals' place ? 340 

If, having dined, you would digest 

Besides, and turning to your rest 

Should find instead . . . 

XIII. 

Now, you shall see 
And judge if a mere foppery 
Pricks on my speaking ! I resolve 
To utter . . yes, it shall devolve 
On you to hear as solemn, strange, 
And dread a thing as in the range 
Of facts, — or fancies, if God will — 
E'er happened to our kind ! I still 350 

Stand in the cloud, and while it wraps 
My face, ought not to speak, perhaps ; 
Seeing that if I carry through 
My purpose, if my words in you 
Find a live actual listener, 
My story, reason must aver 
False after all — the happy chance ! 



88 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

While, if each human countenance 

I meet in London day by day, 

Be what I fear, — my warnings fray 360 

No one, and no one they convert, 

And no one helps me to assert 

How hard it is to really be 

A Christian, and in vacancy 

I pour this story ! 

XIV. 

I commence 
By trying to inform you, whence 
It comes that every Easter-night 
As now, I sit up, watch, till light, 
Upon those chimney-stacks and roofs, 
Give through my window-pane, gray proofs 370 

That Easter-day is breaking slow. 
On such a night three years ago, 
It chanced that I had cause to cross 
The common, where the chapel was, 
Our friend spoke of, the other day — 
You 've not forgotten, I dare say. 
I fell to musing of the time 
So close, the blessed matin-prime 
All hearts leap up at, in some guise — 
One could not well do otherwise. 380 

Insensibly my thoughts were bent 
Toward the main point ; I overwent 
Much the same ground of reasoning 
As you and I just now. One thing 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 89 

Remained, however — one that tasked 

My soul to answer ; and I asked, 

Fairly and frankly, what might be 

That History, that Faith, to me — 

Me there — ■ not me in some domain 

Built up and peopled by my brain, 390 

Weighing its merits as one weighs 

Mere theories for blame or praise, — 

The kingcraft of the Lucumons, 

Or Fourier's scheme, its pros and cons, — 

But my faith there, or none at all. 

" How were my case, now, did I fall 

Dead here, this minute — should I lie 

Faithful or faithless ? " — Note that I 

Inclined thus ever ! — little prone 

For instance, when I lay alone 400 

In childhood, to go calm to sleep 

And leave a closet where might keep 

His watch perdue some murderer 

Waiting till twelve o'clock to stir, 

As good authentic legends tell : 

14 He might : but how improbable ! 

How little likely to deserve 

The pains and trial to the nerve 

Of thrusting head into the dark ! " — 

Urged my old nurse, and bade me mark 410 

Beside, that, should the dreadful scout 

Really lie hid there, and leap out 

At first turn of the rusty key, 

Mine were small gain that she could see, 



go CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Killed not in bed but on the floor, 

And losing one night's sleep the more. 

I tell you, I would always burst 

The door ope, know my fate at first. 

This time, indeed, the closet penned 

No such assassin : but a friend 420 

Rather, peeped out to guard me, fit 

For counsel, Common Sense, to wit, 

Who said a good deal that might pass, — 

Heartening, impartial too, it was, 

Judge else : " For, soberly now, — who 

Should be a Christian if not you ? " 

(Hear how he smoothed me down.) " One takes 

A whole life, sees what course it makes 

Mainly, and not by fits and starts — 

In spite of stoppage which imparts 430 

Fresh value to the general speed. 

A life, with none, would fly indeed : 

Your progressing is slower — right ! 

We deal with progress and not flight. 

Through baffling senses passionate, 

Fancies as restless, — with a freight 

Of knowledge cumbersome enough 

To sink your ship when waves grow rough, 

Though meant for ballast in the hold, — 

I find, 'mid dangers manifold, 440 

The good bark answers to the helm 

Where faith sits, easier to o'erwhelm 

Than some stout peasant's heavenly guid 

Whose hard head could not, if it tried, 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 91 

Conceive a doubt, nor understand 

How senses hornier than his hand 

Should tice the Christian off his guard. 

More happy ! But shall we award 

Less honor to the hull which, dogged 

By storms, a mere wreck, waterlogged, 45c 

Masts by the board, her bulwarks gone, 

And stanchions going, yet bears on, — 

Than to mere life-boats, built to save. 
And triumph o'er the breaking wave ? 

Make perfect your good ship as these, 

And what were her performances \ r 

I added — "Would the ship reach home! 

I wish indeed 'God's kingdom come — ' 

The day when I shall see appear 

His bidding, as my duty, clear 

From doubt ! And it shall dawn, that day, 

Some future season ; Easter may 

Prove, not impossibly, the time — 

Yes, that were striking — fates would chime 

So aptly ! Easter-morn, to bring 

The Judgment ! — deeper in the spring 

Than now, however, when there's snow 

Capping the hills ; for earth must show 

All signs of meaning to pursue 

Her tasks as she was wont to do — 

The skylark, taken by surprise 

As we ourselves, shall recognize 

Sudden the end. For suddenly 

It comes : the dreadfulness must be 



460 



92 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

In that; all warrants the belief — 

4 At night it cometh like a thief.' 

I fancy why the trumpet blows ; — 

Plainly, to wake one. From repose 

We shall start up, at last awake 

From life, that insane dream we take 480 

For waking now, because it seems. 

And as, when now we wake from dreams, 

We laugh, while we recall them, ' Fool, 

To let the chance slip, linger cool 

When such adventure offered ! Just 

A bridge to cross, a dwarf to thrust 

Aside, a wicked mage to stab — 

And, lo ye, I had kissed Queen Mab ! ' — 

So shall we marvel why we grudged 

Our labor here, and idly judged 

Of heaven, we might have gained, but lose ! 490 

Lose ? Talk of loss, and I refuse 

To plead at all ! You speak no worse 

Nor better than my ancient nurse 

When she would tell me in my youth 

I well deserved that shapes uncouth 

Frighted and teased me in my sleep : 

Why could I not in memory keep 

Her precept for the evil's cure ? 

' Pinch your own arm, boy, and be sure 

You '11 wake forthwith ! ' " 5 oo 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 93 

XV. 

And as I said 
This nonsense, throwing back my head 
With light complacent laugh, I found 
Suddenly all the midnight round 
One fire. The dome of heaven had stood 
As made up of a multitude 
Of handbreadth cloudlets, one vast rack 
Of ripples infinite and black, 
From sky to sky. Sudden there went, 
Like horror and astonishment, 

A fierce vindictive scribble of red 510 

Quick flame across, as if one said 
(The angry scribe of Judgment) "There — 
Burn it ! " And straight I was aware 
That the whole ribwork round, minute 
Cloud touching cloud beyond compute, 
Was tinted, each with its own spot 
Of burning at the core, till clot 
Jammed against clot, and spilt its fire 
Over all heaven, which 'gan suspire 
As fanned to measure equable, — 520 

Just so great conflagrations kill 
Night overhead, and rise and sink, 
Reflected. Now the fire would shrink 
And wither off the blasted face 
Of heaven, and I distinct might trace 
The sharp black ridgy outlines left 
Unburned like network — then, each cleft 
The fire had been sucked back into, 



94 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Regorged, and out it surging flew 

Furiously, and night writhed inflamed, 530 

Till, tolerating to be tamed 

No longer, certain rays world-wide 

Shot downwardly. On every side 

Caught past escape, the earth was lit ; 

As if a dragon's nostril split 

And all his famished ire o'erflowed ; 

Then, as he winced at his lord's goad, 

Back he inhaled : whereat I found 

The clouds into vast pillars bound, 

Based on the corners of the earth, 540 

Propping the skies at top : a dearth 

Of fire i' the violet intervals, 

Leaving exposed the utmost walls 

Of time, about to tumble in 

And end the world. 

XVI. 

I felt begin 
The Judgment-Day : to retro cede 
Was too late now. " In very deed," 
(I uttered to myself) " that Day ! " 
The intuition burned away 

All darkness from my spirit too : 550 

There stood I, found and fixed, I knew, 
Choosing the world. The choice was made ; 
And naked and disguiseless stayed, 
And unevadable, the fact. 
My brain held ne'ertheless compact 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 95 

Its senses, nor my heart declined 

Its office ; rather, both combined 

To help me in this juncture. I 

Lost not a second, — agony 

Gave boldness : since my life had end 560 

And my choice with it — best defend, 

Applaud both ! I resolved to say, 

" So was I framed by Thee, such way 

I put to use Thy senses here ! 

It was so beautiful, so near, 

Thy world, — what could I then but choose 

My part there ? Nor did I refuse 

To look above the transient boon 

Of time ; but it was hard so soon 

As in a short life, to give up 570 

Such beauty : I could put the cup 

Undrained of half its fulness, by ; 

But, to renounce it utterly, — 

That was too hard ! Nor did the cry 

Which bade renounce it, touch my brain 

Authentically deep and plain 

Enough to make my lips let go. 

But Thou, who knowest all, dost know 

Whether I was not, life's brief while, 

Endeavoring to reconcile . 580 

Those lips (too tardily, alas !) 

To letting the dear remnant pass, 

One day, — some drops of earthly good 

Untasted ! Is it for this mood, 

That Thou, whose earth delights so well, 

Hast made its complement a hell ? " 



96 CHRISTMAS- EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

XVII. 
A final belch of fire like blood, 
Overbroke all heaven in one flood 
Of doom. Then fire was sky, and sky 
Fire, and both, one brief ecstasy, 590 

Then ashes. But I heard no noise 
(Whatever was) because a Voice 
Beside me spoke thus, "Life is done, 
Time ends, Eternity 's begun, 
And thou art judged for evermore." 

XVIII. 
I looked up ; all seemed as before ; 
Of that cloud-Tophet overhead, 
No trace was left : I saw instead 
The common round me, and the sky 
Above, stretched drear and emptily 600 

Of life. 'T was the last watch of night, 
Except what brings the morning quite ; 
When the armed angel, conscience-clear, 
His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear 
And gazes on the earth he guards, 
Safe one night more through all its wards, 
Till God relieve him at his post. 
"A dream — a waking dream at most!" 
(I spoke out quick, that I might shake 
The horrid nightmare off, and wake.) 610 

"The world gone, yet the world is here ? 
Are not all things as they appear ? 
Is Judgment past for me alone ? — 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 97 

And where had place the great white throne ? 

The rising of the quick and dead ? 

Where stood they, small and great ? Who read 

The sentence from the opened book ? " 

So, by degrees, the blood forsook 

My heart, and let it beat afresh ; 

I knew I should break through the mesh 620 

Of horror, and breathe presently : 

When, lo, again, the Voice by me ! 

XIX. 

I saw . . . Oh, brother, 'mid far sands 

The palm-tree-cinctured city stands, 

Bright-white beneath, as heaven, bright-blue, 

Leans o'er it, while the years pursue 

Their course, unable to abate 

Its paradisal laugh at fate ! 

One morn, — the Arab staggers blind 

O'er a new tract of death, calcined 630 

To ashes, silence, nothingness, — 

And strives, with dizzy wits, to guess 

Whence fell the blow. What if, 'twixt skies 

And prostrate earth, he should surprise 

The imaged vapor, head to foot, 

Surveying, motionless and mute, 

Its work, ere, in a whirlwind rapt, 

It vanish up again ? — So hapt 

My chance. He stood there. Like the smoke 

Pillared o'er Sodom, when day broke, — 640 

I saw Him. One magniflc pall 



98 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Mantled in massive fold and fall 

His dread, and coiled in snaky swathes 

About His feet : night's black, that bathes 

All else, broke, grizzled with despair, 

Against the soul of blackness there. 

A gesture told the mood within — 

That wrapped right hand which based the chin, 

That intense meditation fixed 

On His procedure, — pity mixed 6 5 o 

With the fulfilment of decree. 

Motionless, thus, He spoke to me, 

Who fell before His feet, a mass, 

No man now. 

XX. 

"All is come to pass. 
Such shows are over for each soul 
They had respect to. In the roll 
Of Judgment which convinced mankind 
Of sin, stood many, bold and blind, 
Terror must burn the truth into : 
Their fate for them ! — thou hadst to do 660 

With absolute omnipotence, 
Able its judgments to dispense 
To the whole race, as every one 
Were its sole object. Judgment done, 
God is, thou art, — the rest is hurled 
To nothingness for thee. This world, 
This finite life, thou hast preferred, 
In disbelief of God's own word, 
To heaven and to infinity. 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 99 

Here the probation was for thee, 6 7° 

To show thy soul the earthly mixed 

With heavenly, it must choose betwixt. 

The earthly joys lay palpable, — 

A taint in each, distinct as well ; 

The heavenly flitted, faint and rare, 

Above them, but as truly were 

Taintless, so, in their nature, best. 

Thy choice was earth : thou didst attest 

'T was fitter spirit should subserve 

The flesh, than flesh refine to nerve 

Beneath the spirit's play. Advance 680 

No claim to their inheritance 

Who chose the spirit's fugitive 

Brief gleams, and yearned, ' This were to live 

Indeed, if rays, completely pure 

From flesh that dulls them, could endure,— 

Not shoot in meteor-light athwart 

Our earth, to show how cold and swart 

It lies beneath their fire, but stand 

As stars do, destined to expand, 

Prove veritable worlds, our home ! ' 

Thou saidst, — ' Let spirit star the dome 

Of sky, that flesh may miss no peak, 

No nook of earth, — I shall not seek 

Its service further ! ' Thou art shut 

Out of the heaven of spirit ; glut 

Thy sense upon the world : 't is thine 

Forever — take it!" 



69a 



IOO CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

XXI. 

" How ? Is mine, 

The world ? " (I cried, while my soul broke 

Out in a transport,) " Hast thou spoke 

Plainly in that ? Earth's exquisite 

Treasures of wonder and delight, 

For me ? " 

XXII. 

The austere Voice returned, — 
" So soon made happy ? Hadst thou learned 
What God accounteth happiness, 
Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess 
What hell may be His punishment 
For those who doubt if God invent 
Better than they. Let such men rest 
Content with what they judged the best. 
Let the unjust usurp at will : 
The filthy shall be filthy still : 
Miser, there waits the gold for thee ! 
Hater, indulge thine enmity ! 
And thou, whose heaven self-ordained 
Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained, 
Do it ! Take all the ancient show ! 
The woods shall wave, the rivers flow, 
And men apparently pursue 
Their works, as they were wont to do, 
While living in probation yet. 
I promise not thou shalt forget 
The past, now gone to its account ; 
But leave thee with the old amount 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. IOI 

Of faculties, nor less nor more, 

Unvisited, as heretofore, 

By God's free spirit, that makes an end. 

So, once more, take thy world ! expend 

Eternity upon its shows, 

Flung thee as freely as one rose 730 

Out of a summer's opulence, 

Over the Eden-barrier whence 

Thou art excluded. Knock in vain ! " 

XXIII. 
I sat up. All was still again. 
I breathed free : to my heart, back fled 
The warmth. " But, all the world ! " — I said. 
I stooped and picked a leaf of fern, 
And recollected I might learn 
From books, how many myriad sorts 
Of fern exist, to trust reports, 740 

Each as distinct and beautiful 
As this, the very first I cull. 
Think, from the first leaf to the last ! 
Conceive, then, earth's resources ! Vast 
Exhaustless beauty, endless change 
Of wonder ! and this foot shall range 
Alps, Andes, — and this eye devour 
The bee-bird and the aloe-flower ? 

XXIV. 
Then the Voice, " Welcome so to rate 
The arras-folds that variegate 750 



102 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

The earth, God's antechamber, well ! 

The wise, who waited there, could tell 

By these, what royalties in store 

Lay one step past the entrance-door. 

For whom was reckoned not too much 

This life's munificence ? For such 

As thou, — a race, whereof scarce one 

Was able, in a million, 

To feel that any marvel lay 

In objects round his feet all day ; 760 

Scarce one, in many millions more, 

Willing, if able, to explore 

The secreter, minuter charm ! — 

Brave souls, a fern-leaf could disarm 

Of power to cope with God's intent, — 

Or scared if the south firmament 

With north-fire did its wings refledge ! 

All partial beauty was a pledge 

Of beauty in its plenitude : 

But since the pledge sufficed thy mood, 770 

Retain it ! plenitude be theirs 

Who looked above ! " 

xxv. 

Though sharp despairs 
Shot through me, I held up, bore on. 
" What matter though my trust were gone 
From natural things ? Henceforth my part 
Be less with nature than with art ! 
For art supplants, gives mainly worth 
To nature ; 'tis man stamps the earth — 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 103 

And I will seek his impress, seek 

The statuary of the Greek, 780 

Italy's painting — there my choice 

Shall fix ! " 

XXVI. 

" Obtain it ! " said the Voice. — 
" The one form with its single act, 
Which sculptors labored to abstract, 
The one face, painters tried to draw, 
With its one look, from throngs they saw. 
And that perfection in their soul, 
These only hinted at ? The whole, 
They were but parts of ? What each laid 
His claim to glory on ? — afraid 790 

His fellow-men should give him rank 
By the poor tentatives he shrank 
Smitten at heart from, all the more, 
That gazers pressed in to adore ! 
1 Shall I be judged by only these ? ' 
If such his soul's capacities, 
Even while he trod the earth, — think, now 
What pomp in Buonarroti's brow, 
With its new palace-brain where dwells 
Superb the soul, unvexed by cells 800 

That crumbled with the transient clay ! 
What visions will his right hand's sway 
Still turn to form, as still they burst 
Upon him ? How will he quench thirst, 
Titanically infantine, 
Laid at the breast of the Divine ? 



104 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Does it confound thee, — this first page 

Emblazoning man's heritage ? — 

Can this alone absorb thy sight, 

As pages were not infinite, — 810 

Like the omnipotence which tasks 

Itself, to furnish all that asks 

The soul it means to satiate ? 

What was the world, the starry state 

Of the broad skies, — what, all displays 

Of power and beauty intermixed, 

Which now thy soul is chained betwixt, — 

What else than needful furniture 

For life's first stage ? God's work, be sure, 

No more spreads wasted, than falls scant : 820 

He filled, did not exceed, man's want 

Of beauty in this life. But through 

Life pierce, — and what has earth to do, 

Its utmost beauty's appanage, 

With the requirement of next stage ? 

Did God pronounce earth ' very good ' ? 

Needs must it be, while understood 

For man's preparatory state ; 

Nothing to heighten nor abate : 

Transfer the same completeness here 830 

To serve a new state's use, — and drear 

Deficiency gapes every side ! 

The good, tried once, were bad, retried. 

See the enwrapping rocky niche, 

Sufficient for the sleep, in which 

The lizard breathes for ages safe : 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 105 

Split the mould — and as this would chafe 

The creature's new world-widened sense, 

One minute after day dispense 

The thousand sounds and sights that broke 840 

In on him at the chisel's stroke, — 

So, in God's eye, the earth's first stuff 

Was, neither more nor less, enough 

To house man's soul, man's need fulfil. 

Man reckoned it immeasurable ? 

So thinks the lizard of his vault ! 

Could God be taken in default, 

Short of contrivances, by you, — 

Or reached, ere ready to pursue 

His progress through eternity ? 850 

That chambered rock, the lizard's world, 

Your easy mallet's blow has hurled 

To nothingness forever; so 

Has God abolished at a blow 

This world, wherein his saints were pent, — 

Who, though found grateful and content, 

With the provision there, as thou, 

Yet knew He would not disallow 

Their spirit's hunger, felt as well, — 

Unsated, — not unsatable, 860 

As Paradise gives proof. Deride 

Their choice now, thou who sit'st outside ! " 

XXVII. 
I cried in anguish, " Mind, the mind, 
So miserably cast behind, 



106 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

To gain what had been wisely lost ! 

O, let me strive to make the most 

Of the poor stinted soul, I nipped 

Of budding wings, else now equipped 

For voyage from summer isle to isle ! 

And though she needs must reconcile 8 7 o 

Ambition to the life on ground, 

Still, I can profit by late found 

But precious knowledge. Mind is best — 

I will seize mind, forego the rest, 

And try how far my tethered strength 

May crawl in this poor breadth and length. 

Let me, since I can fly no more, 

As least spin dervish-like about 

(Till giddy rapture almost doubt 

I fly) through circling sciences, 880 

Philosophies and histories ! 

Should the whirl slacken there, then verse, 

Fining to music, shall asperse 

Fresh and fresh fire-dew, till I strain 

Intoxicate, half-break my chain ! 

Not joyless, though more favored feet 

Stand calm, where I want wings to beat 

The floor. At least earth's bond is broke ! " 

XXVIII. 

Then, (sickening even while I spoke) 

" Let me alone ! No answer, pray, 890 

To this ! I know what Thou wilt say ! 

All still is earth's, — to know, as much 



£HRISTMAS-EVK AND EASTER-DAY. 107 

As feel its truths, which if we touch 

With sense, or apprehend in soul, 

What matter ? I have reached the goal — 

' Whereto does knowledge serve ? ' will burn 

My eyes, too sure, at every turn ! 

I cannot look back now, nor stake 

Bliss on the race, for running's sake. 

The goal 's a ruin like the rest ! " — 900 

" And so much worse thy latter quest," 

(Added the Voice) " that even on earth — 

Whenever, in man's soul, had birth 

Those intuitions, grasps of guess, 

That pull the more into the less, 

Making the finite comprehend 

Infinity, — the bard would spend 

Such praise alone, upon his craft, 

As, when wind-lyres obey the waft, 

Goes to the craftsman who arranged 910 

The seven strings, changed them and rechanged — 

Knowing it was the South that harped. 

He felt his song, in singing, warped ; 

Distinguished his and God's part : whence 

A world of spirit as of sense 

Was plain to him, yet not too plain, 

Which he could traverse, not remain 

A guest in : — else were permanent 

Heaven on earth, which its gleams were meant 

To sting with hunger for full light, — 920 

Made visible in verse, despite 

The veiling weakness, — truth by means 



108 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Of fable, showing while it screens, — 

Since highest truth, man e'er supplied, 

Was ever fable on outside. 

Such gleams made bright the earth an age ; 

Now, the whole sun 's his heritage ! 

Take up thy world, it is allowed, 

Thou who hast entered in the cloud ! " 

XXIX. 

Then I — " Behold, my spirit bleeds, 930 

Catches no more at broken reeds, — 

But lilies flower those reeds above : 

I let the world go, and take love ! 

Love survives in me, albeit those 

I love be henceforth masks and shows, 

Not loving men and women : still 

I mind how love repaired all ill, 

Cured wrong, soothed grief, made earth amends 

With parents, brothers, children, friends ! 

Some semblance of a woman yet 940 

With eyes to help me to forget, 

Shall live with me ; and I will match 

Departed love with love, attach 

Its fragments to my whole, nor scorn 

The poorest of the grains of corn 

I save from shipwreck on this isle, 

Trusting its barrenness may smile 

With happy foodful green one day, 

More precious for the pains. I pray 

For love, then, only ! " 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 109 

XXX. 

At the word, 950 

The Form, I looked to have been stirred 
With pity and approval, rose 
O'er me, as when the headsman throws 
Axe over shoulder to make end — 
I fell prone, letting Him expend 
His wrath, while, thus, the inflicting Voice 
Smote me. " Is this thy final choice ? 
Love is the best ? 'T is somewhat late ! 
And all thou dost enumerate 

Of power and beauty in the world, 9 6o 

The mightiness of love was curled 
Inextricably round about. 
Love lay within it and without, 
To clasp thee, — but in vain! Thy soul 
Still shrunk from Him who made the whole, 
Still set deliberate aside 
His love ! — Now take love ! Well betide 
Thy tardy conscience ! Haste to take 
The show of love for the name's sake, 
Remembering every moment Who 970 

Beside creating thee unto 
These ends, and these for thee, was said 
To undergo death in thy stead 
In flesh like thine : so ran the tale. 
What doubt in thee could countervail 
Belief in it ? Upon the ground 
That in the story had been found 
Too much love ! How could God love so ? 



IIO CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

He who in all His works below 

Adapted to the needs of man, 980 

Made love the basis of the plan, — 

Did love, as was demonstrated : 

While man, who was so fit instead 

To hate, as every day gave proof, — 

Man thought man, for his kind's behoof, 

Both could and did invent that scheme 

Of perfect love : 't would well beseem 

Cain's nature thou wast wont to praise, 

Not tally with God's usual ways ! " 

XXXI. 

And I cowered deprecatingly — 990 

"Thou Love of God ! Or let me die, 

Or grant what shall seem heaven almost ! 

Let me not know that all is lost, 

Though lost it be — leave me not tied 

To this despair, this corpse-like bride ! 

Let that old life seem mine — no more — 

With limitation as before, 

With darkness, hunger, toil, distress : 

Be all the earth a wilderness ! 

Only let me go on, go on, 1000 

Still hoping ever and anon 

To reach one eve the Better Land ! " 

XXXII. 
Then did the Form expand, expand — 
I knew Him through the dread disguise, 



CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. Ill 

As the whole God within His eyes 
Embraced me. 

XXXIII. 

When I lived again, 
The day was breaking, — the gray plain 
I rose from, silvered thick with dew. 
Was this a vision ? False or true ? 
Since then, three varied years are spent, 
And commonly my mind is bent 
To think it was a dream — be sure 
A mere dream and distemperature — 
The last day's watching : then the night, — 
The shock of that strange Northern Light 
Set my head swimming, bred in me 
A dream. And so I live, you see, 
Go through the world, try, prove, reject, 
Prefer, still struggling to effect 
My warfare ; happy that I can 
Be crossed and thwarted as a man, 
Not left in God's contempt apart, 
With ghastly smooth life, dead at heart, 
Tame in earth's paddock as her prize. 
Thank God, she still each method tries 
To catch me, who may yet escape, 
She knows, the fiend in angel's shape ! 
Thank God, no paradise stands barred 
To entry, and I find it hard 

To be a Christian, as I said ! IQ 3° 

Still every now and then my head 
Raised glad, sinks mournful — all grows drear 



112 CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 

Spite of the sunshine, while I fear 
And think, " How dreadful to be grudged 
No ease henceforth, as one that 's judged, 
Condemned to earth for ever, shut 
From heaven ! " 

But Easter-Day breaks ! But 
Christ rises ! Mercy every way 
Is infinite, — and who can say ? 



SAUL 



i. 

Said Abner, "At last thou art come! Ere I tell, 

ere thou speak, 
Kiss my cheek, wish me well ! " Then I wished it, 

and did kiss his cheek. 
And he, "Since the King, O my friend, for thy 

countenance sent, 
Neither drunken nor eaten have we ; nor until from 

his tent 
Thou return with the joyful assurance the King 

liveth yet, 
Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with the 

water be wet. 
For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space of 

three days, 
Not a sound hath escaped to thy servants, of prayer 

nor of praise, 
To betoken that Saul and the Spirit have ended 

their strife, 
And that, faint in his triumph, the monarch sinks 

back upon life. io 

II. 
Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved ! God's child, 

with his dew 
On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still 

living and blue 

"3 



1 14 SAUL. 

Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, as if 

no wild heat 
Were now raging to torture the desert ! " 

III. 

Then I, as was meet, 

Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and rose on 

my feet, 
And ran o'er the sand, burnt to powder. The tent 

was unlooped ; 
I pulled up the spear that obstructed, and under I 

stooped ; 
Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, all 

withered and gone, 
That extends to the second inclosure, I groped my 

way on 
Till I felt where the foldskirts fly open. Then once 

more I prayed, 20 

And opened the foldskirts and entered, and was not 

afraid, 
But spoke, " Here is David, thy servant ! " And no 

voice replied. 
At the first I saw naught but the blackness; but 

soon I descried 
A something more black than the blackness — the 

vast, the upright 
Main prop which sustains the pavilion : and slow 

into sight 
Grew a figure against it, gigantic and blackest of 

all; — 
Then a sunbeam, that burst through the tent-roof, 

showed Saul. 



SAUL. 115 

IV. 

He stood as erect as that tent-prop, both arms 

stretched out wide 
On the great cross-support in the centre, that goes 

to each side ; 
He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, caught 

in his pangs 30 

And waiting his change, the king-serpent all heavily 

hangs, 
Far away from his kind, in the pine, till deliverance 

come 
With the spring-time, — so agonized Saul, drear and 

stark, blind and dumb. 

V. 

Then I tuned my harp, — took off the lilies we twine 

round its chords 
Lest they snap 'neath the stress of the noontide — 

those sunbeams like swords ! 
And I first played the tune all our sheep know, as, 

one after one, 
So docile they come to the pen-door till folding be 

done. 
They are white and untorn by the bushes, for lo, 

they have fed 
Where the long grasses stifle the water within the 

stream's bed ; 
And now one after one seeks its lodging, as star 

follows star 40 

Into eve and the blue, far above us, — so blue and 

so far ! — 



Il6 SAUL. 

VI. 

Then the tune, for which quails on the cornland will 

each leave his mate 
To fly after the player ; then, what makes the crickets 

elate, 
Till for boldness they fight one another : and then, 

what has weight 
To set the quick jerboa a-musing outside his sand 

house — 
There are none such as he for a wonder, half bird 

and half mouse ! 
God made all the creatures and gave them our love 

and our fear, 
To give sign, we and they are his children, one 

family here. 

VII. 

Then I played the help-tune of our reapers, their 

wine-song, when hand 
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, 

and great hearts expand 50 

And grow one in the sense of this world's life. — 

And then, the last song 
When the dead man is praised on his journey — 

" Bear, bear him along 
With his few faults shut up like dead flowerets ! are 

balm-seeds not here 
To console us ? The land has none left, such as he 

on the bier. 
Oh, would we might keep thee, my brother!" — 

And then, the glad chant 



SAUL. 117 

Of the marriage, — first go the young maidens, next, 
she whom we vaunt 

As the beauty, the pride of our dwelling. — And 
then, the great march 

Wherein man runs to man to assist him and but- 
tress an arch 

Naught can break ; who shall harm them, our 
friends ? — 

Then, the chorus intoned 

As the Levites go up to the altar in glory en- 
throned . . 60 

But I stopped here : for here in the darkness, Saul 
groaned. 

VIII. 

And I paused, held my breath in such silence, and 

listened apart ; 
And the tent shook, for mighty Saul shuddered : 

and sparkles 'gan dart 
From the jewels that woke in his turban at once 

with a start — 
Ail its lordly male-sapphires, and rubies courageous 

at heart. 
So the head: but the body still moved not, still 

hung there erect. 
And I bent once again to my playing, pursued it 

unchecked, 
As I sang, — JX 

" Oh, our manhood's prime vigor I 
No spirit feels waste, 
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing, nor smew 
unbraced. 



Il8 SAUL. 

Oh, the wild joys of living ! the leaping from rock 

up to rock, 70 

The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, 

the cool silver shock 
Of the plunge in a pool's living water, the hunt 

of the bear, 
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched 

in his lair. 
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with 

gold dust divine, 
And the locust-flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full 

draught of wine, 
And the sleep in the dried river-channel where 

bulrushes tell 
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly 

and well. 
How good is man's life, the mere living ! how fit 

to employ 
All the heart and the soul and the senses, for ever 

in joy ! 
Hast thou loved the white locks of thy father, 

whose sword thou didst guard 80 

When he trusted thee forth with the armies, for 

glorious reward ? 
Didst thou see the thin hands of thy mother, held 

up as men sung 
The low song of the nearly-departed, and heard her 

faint tongue 
Joining in while it could to the witness, 'Let one 

more attest, 



SAUL. 119 

I have lived, seen God's hand through a lifetime, 

and all was for best ! ' 
Then they sung through their tears in strong 

triumph, not much, but the rest. 
And thy brothers, the help and the contest, the 

working whence grew 
Such result as, from seething grape-bundles, the 

spirit strained true : 
And the friends of thy boyhood — that boyhood of 

wonder and hope, 
Present promise, and wealth of the future beyond 

the eye's scope, — 90 

Till lo, thou art grown to a monarch ; a people is 

thine ; 
And all gifts which the world offers singly, on one 

head combine ! 
On one head, all the beauty and strength, love, and 

rage (like the throe 
That, a-work in the rock, helps its labor, and lets 

the gold go), 
High ambition and deeds which surpass it, fame 

crowning them, — all 
Brought to blaze on the head of one creature — 

King Saul ! " 

x. 

And lo, with that leap of my spirit, — heart, hand, 
harp, and voice, 

Each lifting Saul's name out of sorrow, each bid- 
ding rejoice 

Saul's fame in the light it was made for — as when, 
dare I say, 



120 SAUIv. 

The Lord's army in rapture of service, strains 

. through its array, 100 

And upsoareth the cherubim-chariot — " Saul ! " 

cried I, and stopped, 
And waited the thing that should follow. Then 

Saul, who hung propped 
By the tent's cross-support in the centre, was struck 

by his name. 
Have ye seen when Spring's arrowy summons goes 

right to the aim, 
And some mountain, the last to withstand her, that 

held, (he alone, 
While the vale laughed in freedom and flowers) on 

a broad bust of stone 
A year's snow bound about for a breastplate, — 

leaves grasp of the sheet ? 
Fold on fold all at once it crowds thunderously 

down to his feet, 
And there fronts you, stark, black, but alive yet, 

your mountain of old, 
With his rents, the successive bequeathings of ages 

untold — no 

Yea, each harm got in fighting your battles, each 

furrow and scar 
Of his head thrust 'twixt you and the tempest — 

all hail, there they are ! — 
Now again to be softened with verdure, again hold 

the nest 
Of the dove, tempt the goat and its young to the 

green on his crest 



SAUL. 121 

For their food in the ardors of summer ! One long 

shudder thrilled 
All the tent till the very air tingled, then sank and 

was stilled, 
At the King's self left standing before me, released 

and aware. 
What was gone, what remained ? all to traverse 

'twixt hope and despair, 
Death was past, life not come : so he waited. 

Awhile his right hand 
Held the brow, helped the eyes left too vacant forth- 
with to remand 120 
To their place what new objects should enter : 't was 

Saul as before. 
I looked up and dared gaze at those eyes, nor was 

hurt any more 
Than by slow pallid sunsets in autumn, ye watch 

from the shore 
At their sad level gaze o'er the ocean — a sun's slow 

decline 
Over hills which, resolved in stern silence, o'erlap 

and entwine 
Base with base to knit strength more intensely : so, 

arm folded arm 
O'er the chest whose slow heavings subsided. 

XI. 

What spell or what charm, 
(For, awhile there was trouble within me) what next 
should I urge 



122 SAUL. 

To sustain him where song had restored him? — 
Song filled to the verge 

His cup with the wine of this life, pressing all that 
it yields 130 

Of mere fruitage, the strength and the beauty : be- 
yond, on what fields, 

Glean a vintage more potent and perfect to brighten 
the eye 

And bring blood to the lip, and commend them the 
cup they put by ? 

He saith, " It is good ; " still he drinks not : he lets 
me praise life, 

Gives assent, yet would die for his own part. 

XII. 

Then fancies grew rife 
Which had come long ago on the pasture, when 

round me the sheep 
Fed in silence — above, the one eagle wheeled slow 

as in sleep, 
And I lay in my hollow, and mused on the world 

that might lie 
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt 

the hill and the sky : 
And I laughed — " Since my days are ordained to 

be passed with my flocks, mo 

Let me people at least with my fancies, the plains 

and the rocks, 
Dream the life I am never to mix with, and image 

the show 



SAUL. 123 

Of mankind as they live in those fashions I hardly 

shall know ! 
Schemes of life, its best rules and right uses, the 

courage that gains, 
And the prudence that keeps what men strive for." 

And now these old trains 
Of vague thought came again ; I grew surer ; so, 

once more the string 
Of my harp made response to my spirit, as thus — 

XIII. 

" Yea, my king, " 
I began — "thou dost well in rejecting mere com- 
forts that spring 
From the mere mortal life held in common by man 

and by brute : 
In our flesh grows the branch of this life, in our soul 

it bears fruit. 150 

Thou hast marked the slow rise of the tree, — how 

its stem trembled first 
Till it passed the kid's lip, the stag's antler ; then 

safely outburst 
The fan-branches all round ; and thou mindest when 

these too, in turn 
Broke a-bloom and the palm-tree seemed perfect ; 

yet more was to learn, 
E'en the good that comes in with the palm-fruit. 

Our dates shall we slight, 
When their juice brings a cure for all sorrow ? or 

care for the plight 



I 24 S AUIy. 

Of the palm's self whose slow growth produced 

them ? Not so ! stem and branch 
Shall decay, nor be known in their place, while the 

palm-wine shall stanch 
Every wound of man's spirit in winter. I pour thee 

such wine. 
Leave the flesh to the fate it was fit for ! the spirit 

be thine ! 160 

By the spirit, when age shall o'ercome thee, thou 

still shalt enjoy 
More indeed, than at first when inconscious, the life 

of a boy. 
Crush that life, and behold its wine running ! each 

deed thou hast done 
Dies, revives, goes to work in the world ; until e'en 

as the sun 
Looking down on the earth, though clouds spoil him, 

though tempests efface, 
Can find nothing his own deed produced not, must 

everywhere trace 
The results of his past summer-prime, — so, each ray 

of thy will, 
Every flash of thy passion and prowess, long over, 

shall thrill 
Thy whole people, the countless, with ardor, till they 

too give forth 
A like cheer to their sons, who in turn fill the South 

and the North 170 

With the radiance thy deed was the germ of. Carouse 

in the past ! 



SAUIv. 125 

But the license of age has its limit ; thou diest at 

last : 
As the lion when age dims his eyeball, the rose 

at her height, 
So with man — so his power and his beauty for ever 

take flight. 
No ! again a long draught of my soul-wine ! Look 

forth o'er the years ! 
Thou hast done now with eyes for the actual ; begin 

with the seer's ! 
Is Saul dead ? in the depth of the vale make his 

tomb — bid arise 
A gray mountain of marble heaped four-square, till, 

built to the skies, 
Let it mark where the great First King slumbers : 

whose fame would ye know ? 
Up above see the rock's naked face, where the 

record shall go 180 

In great characters cut by the scribe, — Such was 

Saul, so he did ; 
With the sages directing the work, by the populace 

chid, — 
For not half, they '11 affirm, is comprised there ! 

Which fault to amend, 
In the grove with his kind grows the cedar, whereon 

they shall spend 
(See, in tablets 't is level before them) their praise, 

and record 
With the gold of the graver, Saul's story, — the 

statesman's great word 



126 SAUI,. 

Side by side with the poet's sweet comment. The 

river's a-wave 
With smooth paper-reeds grazing each other when 

prophet winds rave : 
So the pen gives unborn generations their due and 

their part 
In thy being ! Then, first of the mighty, thank God 

that thou art." 

XIV. 
And behold while I sang . . . But O Thou who didst 

grant me that day, 
And before it not seldom hast granted Thy help to 

essay, 
Carry on, and complete an adventure, — my Shield 

and my Sword 
In that act where my soul was Thy servant, Thy 

word was my word, — 
Still be with me, who then at the summit of human 

endeavor 
And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed 

hopeless as ever 
On the new stretch of heaven above me — till, mighty 

to save, 
Just one lift of Thy hand cleared that distance — 

God's throne from man's grave ! 
Let me tell out my tale to its ending — my voice to 

my heart, 
Which can scarce dare believe in what marvels last 

night I took part, 200 

As this morning I gather the fragments, alone with 

my sheep, 



SAUL. 127 

And still fear lest the terrible glory evanish like 

sleep ! 
For I wake in the gray dewy covert, while Hebron 

upheaves 
The dawn struggling with night on his shoulder and 

Kidron retrieves 
Slow the damage of yesterday's sunshine. 

XV. 

I say then, — my song 
While I sang thus, assuring the monarch, and ever 

more strong 
Made a proffer of good to console him — he slowly 

resumed 
His old motions and habitudes kingly. The right 

hand replumed 
His black locks to their wonted composure, adjusted 

the swathes 
Of his turban, and see — the huge sweat that his 

countenance bathes, 210 

He wipes off with the robe ; and he girds now his 

loins as of yore, 
And feels slow for the armlets of price, with the 

clasp set before. 
He is Saul, ye remember in glory, — ere error had 

bent 
The broad brow from the daily communion ; and 

still, though much spent 
Be the life and the bearing that front you, the same, 

God did choose, 



128 SAUL. 

To receive what a man may waste, desecrate, never 

quite lose. 
So sank he along by the tent-prop, till, stayed by the 

pile 
Of his armor and war-cloak and garments, he leaned 

there awhile, 
And sat out my singing, — one arm round the tent- 
prop, to raise 
His bent head, and the other hung slack — till I 

touched on the praise 220 

I foresaw from all men in all time, to the man patient 

there ; 
And thus ended, the harp falling forward. Then 

first I was 'ware 
That he sat, as I say, with my head just above his 

vast knees 
Which were thrust out on each side around me, like 

oak-roots which please 
To encircle a lamb when it slumbers. I looked up 

to know 
If the best I could do had brought solace : he spoke 

not, but slow 
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it 

with care 
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow: 

through my hair 
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my 

head, with kind power — 
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a 

flower. 230 



SAUI,. 129 

Thus held he me there with his great eyes that 
scrutinized mine — 

And oh, all my heart how it loved him ! but where 
was the sign ? 

I yearned — "Could I help thee, my father, invent- 
ing a bliss, 

I would add to that life of the past, both the future 
and this. 

I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages 
hence, 

As this moment, — had love but the warrant, love's 
heart to dispense ! " 

XVI. 

Then the truth came upon me. No harp more — no 
song more ! outbroke — 

XVII. 

" I have gone the whole round of creation : I saw 

and I spoke : 
I, a work of God's hand for that purpose, received 

in my brain 
And pronounced on the rest of His handwork — 

returned Him again 240 

His creation's approval or censure : I spoke as I 

saw. 
I report, as a man may of God's work — all's love, 

yet all 's law. 
Now I lay down the judgeship He lent me. Each 

faculty tasked 



130 SAUL. 

To perceive Him, has gained an abyss, where a 

dew-drop was asked. 
Have I knowledge ? confounded it shrivels at Wis- 
dom laid bare. 
Have I forethought? how purblind, how blank, to 

the Infinite Care ! 
Do I task any faculty highest, to image success ? 
I but open my eyes, — and perfection, no more and 

no less 
In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is 

seen God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul, 

and the clod. 250 

And thus looking within and around me, I ever 

renew 
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending up- 
raises it too) 
The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's 

all-complete, 
As by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His 

feet. 
Yet with all this abounding experience, this Deity 

known, 
I shall dare to discover some province, some gift of 

my own. 
There 's a faculty pleasant to exercise, hard to 

hoodwink, 
I am fain to keep still in abeyance, (I laugh as I 

think) 
Lest, insisting to claim and parade in it, wot ye, I 

worst 



SAUI,. 131 

E'en the Giver in one gift. — Behold ! I could love 

if I durst ! 260 

But I sink the pretension as fearing a man may o'er- 

take 
God's own speed in the one way of love : I abstain, 

for love's sake. — 
What, my soul ? see thus far and no farther ? when 

doors great and small, 
Nine-and-ninety flew ope at our touch, should the 

hundredth appall ? 
In the least things have faith, yet distrust in the 

greatest of all ? 
Do I find love so full in my nature, God's ultimate 

gift, 
That I doubt His own love can compete with it ? 

Here, the parts shift ? 
Here, the creature surpass the Creator, the end, 

what Began ? — 
Would I fain in my impotent yearning do all for this 

man, 
And dare doubt He alone shall not help me, who 

yet alone can ? 270 

Would it ever have entered my mind, the bare will, 

much less power, 
To bestow on this Saul what I sang of, the marvel- 
lous dower 
Of the life he was gifted and filled with ? to make 

such a soul, 
Such a body, and then such an earth for insphering 

the whole ? 



132 SAUL. 

And doth it not enter my mind (as my warm tears 

attest) 
These good things being given, to go on, and give 

one more, the best ? 
Ay, to save and redeem and restore him, maintain at 

the height 
This perfection, — succeed with life's dayspring, 

death's minute of night ? 
Interpose at the difficult minute, snatch Saul, the 

mistake, 
Saul, the failure, the ruin he seems now, — and bid 

him awake 280 

From the dream, the probation, the prelude, to find 

himself set 
Clear and safe in new light and new life, — a new 

harmony yet 
To be run, and continued, and ended — who knows? 

— or endure ! 
The man taught enough by life's dream, of the rest 

to make sure ; 
By the pain-throb, triumphantly winning intensified 

bliss, 
And the next world's reward and repose, by the 

struggle in this. 

XVIII. 

" I believe it ! 't is Thou, God, that givest, 't is I who 

receive : 
In the first is the last, in Thy will is my power to 

believe. 



SAUL. 133 

All 's one gift : Thou canst grant it, moreover, as 

prompt to my prayer 
As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms 

to the air. 290 

From Thy will stream the worlds, life and nature, 

Thy dread Sabaoth : 
/will? — the mere atoms despise me! Why am I 

not loth 
To look that, even that in the face too ? why is it I 

dare 
Think but lightly of such impuissance ? what stops 

my despair ? 
This ; — 't is not what man Does which exalts him, 

but what man Would do ! 
See the King — I would help him but cannot, the 

wishes fall through. 
Could I wrestle to raise him from sorrow, grow poor 

to enrich, 
To fill up his life, starve my own out, I would — 

knowing which, 
I know that my service is perfect. — Oh, speak 

through me now ! 
Would I suffer for him that I love ? So wouldst 

Thou — so wilt Thou ! 300 

So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, utter- 
most crown — 
And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor 

down 
One spot for the creature to stand in ! It is by no 

breath, 



134 SAtju 

Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue 

with death ! 
As Thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be 

proved 
Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being 

Beloved ! 
He who did most shall bear most; the strongest 

shall stand the most weak. 
'T is the weakness in strength that I cry for ! my 

flesh that I seek 
In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it 

shall be 
A Face like my face that receives thee : a Man like 

to me, 310 

Thou shalt love and be loved by, for ever ! a Hand 

like this hand 
Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee ! See 

the Christ stand ! " 

XIX. 

I know not too well how I found my way home in 

the night. 
There were witnesses, cohorts about me, to left and 

to right, 
Angels, powers, the unuttered, unseen, the alive, the 

aware : 
I repressed, I got through them as hardly, as strug- 

glingly there, 
As a runner beset by the populace famished for 

news — 



SAUL. 135 

Life or death. The whole earth was awakened, hell 

loosed with her crews ; 
And the stars of night beat with emotion, and tingled 

and shot 
Out in fire the strong pain of pent knowledge : but 

I fainted not, 320 

For the Hand still impelled me at once and sup- 
ported, suppressed 
All the tumult, and quenched it with quiet, and holy 

behest, 
Till the rapture was shut in itself, and the earth 

sank to rest. 
Anon at the dawn, all that trouble had withered 

from earth — 
Not so much, but I saw it die out in the day's 

tender birth ; 
In the gathered intensity brought to the gray of the 

hills ; 
In the shuddering forests' held breath ; in the sudden 

wind thrills ; 
In the startled wild beasts that bore off, each with 

eye sidling still 
Though averted, in wonder and dread; and the 

birds stiff and chill 
That rose heavily, as I approached them, made 

stupid with awe : 330 

E'en the serpent that slid away silent, — he felt the 

new law. 
The same stared in the white humid faces upturned 

by the flowers ; 



136 SAUL. 

The same worked in the heart of the cedar and 
moved the vine-bowers. 

And the little brooks witnessing murmured, per- 
sistent and low, 

With their obstinate, all but hushed voices — " E'en 
so ! it is so ! " 



AN EPISTLE 

CONTAINING THE 

STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, 
THE ARAB PHYSICIAN. 

Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, 

The not-incurious in God's handiwork 

(This man's-flesh He hath admirably made, 

Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, 

To coop up and keep down on earth a space 

That puff of vapor from His mouth, man's soul) — 

To Abib, all-sagacious in our art, 

Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast, 

Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks 9 

Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain, 

Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip 

Back and rejoin its source before the term, — 

And aptest in contrivance (under God) 

To baffle it by deftly stopping such : — 

The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home 

Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with 

peace), 
Three samples of true snake-stone — r rarer still, 
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, 
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs) 
And writeth now the twenty-second time. 20 

My journeyings were brought to Jericho : 
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art 

137 



138 AN EPISTLE. 

Shall count a little labor unrepaid ? 

I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone 

On many a flinty furlong of this land. 

Also, the country-side is all on fire 

With rumors of a marching hitherward — 

Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. 

A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear ; 

Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls : 30 

I cried and threw my staff and he was gone. 

Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me, 

And once a town declared me for a spy ; 

But at the end, I reach Jerusalem, 

Since this poor covert where I pass the night, 

This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence 

A man with plague-sores at the third degree 

Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here ! 

'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe, 

To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 40 

And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. 

A viscid choler is observable 

In tertians, I was nearly bold to say ; 

And falling-sickness hath a happier cure 

Than our school wots of : there 's a spider here 

Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, 

Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back ; 

Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his 

mind, 
The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to ? 
Hie service payeth me a sublimate 50 

Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. 



AN EPISTLE. 139 

Best wait : I reach Jerusalem at morn, 

There set in order my experiences, 

Gather what most deserves and give thee all — 

Or I might add, Judea's gum-tragacanth 

Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained, 

Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry, 

In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease 

Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy — 

Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar — 60 

But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end. 

Yet stay : my Syrian blinketh gratefully, 
Protesteth his devotion is my price — 
Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal ? 
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush, 
What set me off a-writing first of all. 
An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang ! 
For, be it this town's barrenness — or else 
The Man had something in the look of him — 
His case has struck me far more than 't is worth. 7° 
So, pardon if — (lest presently I lose 
In the great press of novelty at hand 
The care and pains this somehow stole from me) 
I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind, ' 
Almost in sight — for, wilt thou have the truth ? 
The very man is gone from me but now, 
Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. 
Thus then, and let thy better wit help all. 

'Tis but a case of mania — subinduced 
By epilepsy, at the turning-point 80 



140 AN EPISTLE. 

Of trance prolonged unduly some three days : 

When, by the exhibition of some drug 

Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art 

Unknown to me and which 't were well to know, 

The evil thing out-breaking all at once 

Left the man whole and sound of body indeed, — 

But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide, 

Making a clear house of it too suddenly, 

The first conceit that entered might inscribe 

Whatever it was minded on the wall 

So plainly at that vantage, as it were, 

(First come, first served) that nothing subsequent 

Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls 

The just-returned and new-established soul 

Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart 

That henceforth she will read or these or none. 

And first — the man's own firm conviction rests 

That he was dead (in fact they buried him) — 

That he was dead and then restored to life 

By a Nazarene physician of his tribe : — 1 

'Sayeth, the same bade " Rise," and he did rise. 

" Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry. 

Not so this figment ! — not, that such a fume, 

Instead of giving way to time and health, 

Should eat itself into the life of life, 

As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and all ! 

For see, how he takes up the after-life. 

The man — it is one Lazarus a Jew, 

Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age, 

The body's habit wholly laudable, 11 



AN EPISTLE. H l 

As much, indeed, beyond the common health 

As he were made and put aside to show. 

Think, could we penetrate by any drug 

And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh, 

And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep ! 

Whence has the man the balm that brightens all ? 

This grown man eyes the world now like a child. 

Some elders of his tribe, I should premise, 

Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep, 

To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, 

Now sharply, now with sorrow, — told the case, — 

He listened not except I spoke to him, 

But folded his two hands and let them talk, 

Watching the flies that buzzed : and yet no fool. 

And that 's a sample how his years must go. 

Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life, 

Should find a treasure, — can he use the same 

With straitened habits and with tastes starved small 

And take at once to his impoverished brain 

The sudden element that changes things, '3 

That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand, 

And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust ? 

Is he not such an one as moves to mirth — 

Warily parsimonious, when no need, 

Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times ? 

All prudent counsel as to what befits 

The golden mean, is lost on such an one. 

The man's fantastic will is the man's law. 

So here — we call the treasure knowledge, say, — 

Increased beyond the fleshly faculty — * 



142 AN EPISTLE. 

Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, 

Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing heaven : 

The man is witless of the size, the sum, 

The value in proportion of all things, 

Or whether it be little or be much. 

Discourse to him of prodigious armaments 

Assembled to besiege his city now, 

And of the passing of a mule with gourds — 

'T is one ! Then take it on the other side, 

Speak of some trifling fact — he will gaze rapt 150 

With stupor at its very littleness — 

(Far as I see) as if in that indeed 

He caught prodigious import, whole results ; 

And so will turn to us the bystanders 

In ever the same stupor (note this point) 

That we too see not with his opened eyes. 

Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, 

Preposterously, at cross purposes. 

Should his child sicken unto death, — why, look 

For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 160 

Or pretermission of his daily craft ! 

While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child 

At play or in the school or laid asleep, 

Will startle him to an agony of fear, 

Exasperation, just as like. Demand 

The reason why — " 't is but a word," object — 

" A gesture " — he regards thee as our lord 

Who lived there in the pyramid alone, 

Looked at us (dost thou mind ?) when, being young, 

We both would unadvisedly recite 170 



AN KPISTI.K. 143 

Some charm's beginning, from that book of his, 

Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst 

All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. 

Thou and the child have each a veil alike 

Thrown o'er your heads, from under which yc both 

Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match 

Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know ! 

He holds on firmly to some thread of life — 

(It is the life to lead perforcedly) 

Which runs across some vast distracting orb 180 

Of glory on either side that meagre thread, 

Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet — 

The spiritual life around the earthly life : 

The law of that is known to him as this, 

His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here. 

So is the man perplext with impulses 

Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on, 

Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, — 

And not along, this black thread through the blaze — 

" It should be " balked by " here it cannot be." 190 

And oft the man's soul springs into his face 

As if he saw again and heard again 

His sage that bade him " Rise " and he did rise. 

Something, a word, a tick of the blood within 

Admonishes : then back he sinks at once 

To ashes, who was very fire before, 

In sedulous recurrence to his trade 

Whereby he earneth him the daily bread ; 

And studiously the humbler for that pride, 

Professedly the faultier that he knows 200 



144 AN EPISTLE. 

God's secret, while he holds the thread of life. 

Indeed the especial marking of the man 

Is prone submission to the heavenly will - 

Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 

'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last 

For that same death which must restore his being 

To equilibrium, body loosening soul 

Divorced even now by premature full growth : 

He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live 

So long as God please, and just how God please. 210 

He even seeketh not to please God more 

(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please. 

Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach 

The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be — 

Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do : 

How can he give his neighbor the real ground, 

His own conviction ? Ardent as he is — 

Call his great truth a lie, why still the old 

" Be it as God please " reassureth him. 

I probed the sore as thy disciple should, 220 

" How, beast," said I, " this stolid carelessness 

Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march 

To stamp out like a little spark thy town, 

Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once ? " 

He merely looked with his large eyes on me. 

The man is apathetic, you deduce ? 

Contrariwise he loves both old and young, 

Able and weak, affects the very brutes 

And birds — how say I ? flowers of the field — 

As a wise workman recognizes tools 230 



AN EPISTLE . 145 

In a master's workshop, loving what they make. 

Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb : 

Only impatient, let him do his best, 

At ignorance and carelessness and sin — 

An indignation which is promptly curbed : 

As when in certain travel I have feigned 

To be an ignoramus in our art 

According to some preconceived design, 

And happed to hear the land's practitioners 

Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance, 240 

Prattle fantastically on disease, 

Its cause and cure — and I must hold my peace ! 

Thou wilt object — why have I not ere this 
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene 
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source, 
Conferring with the frankness that befits ? 
Alas ! it grieveth me, the learned leech 
Perished in a tumult many years ago, 
Accused, — our learning's fate, — of wizardry, 
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule 250 

And creed prodigious as described to me. 
His death, which happened when the earthquake fell 
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss 
To occult learning in our lord the sage 
Who lived there in the pyramid alone) 
Was wrought by the mad people — that 's their wont ! 
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it, 
To his tried virtue, for miraculous help — 
How could he stop the earthquake ? That 's their way ! 



146 AN EPISTLE. 

The other imputations must be lies : 260 

But take one, though I loathe to give it thee, 

In mere respect for any good man's fame : 

(And after all, our patient Lazarus 

Is stark mad ; should we count on what he says ? 

Perhaps not : though in writing to a leech 

'T is well to keep back nothing of a case.) 

This man so cured regards the curer, then, 

As — God forgive me ! — who but God himself, 

Creator and Sustainer of the world, 

That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile ! — 270 

'Sayeth that such an One was born and lived, 

Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house, 

Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know, 

And yet was . . . what I said nor choose repeat, 

And must have so avouched Himself, in fact, 

In hearing of this very Lazarus 

Who saith — but why all this of what he saith ? 

Why write of trivial matters, things of price % 

Calling at every moment for remark ? 

I noticed on the margin of a pool 280 

Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, 

Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange ! 

Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, 
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem 
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth. 
Nor I myself discern in what is writ 
Good cause for the peculiar interest 
And awe indeed this man has touched me with. 



AN EPISTLK. 147 

Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness 

Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus : 290 

I crossed a ridge of short, sharp, broken hills 

Like an old lion's cheek-teeth. Out there came 

A moon made like a face with certain spots 

Multiform, manifold and menacing : 

Then a wind rose behind me. So we met 

In this old sleepy town at unaware, 

The man and I. I send thee what is writ. 

Regard it as a chance, a matter risked 

To this ambiguous Syrian — he may lose, 

Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. 300 

Jerusalem's repose shall make amends 

For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine ; 

Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell ! 

The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think ? 
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — 
So, through the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, " O heart I made, a heart beats here ! 
Face, My hands fashioned, see it in Myself. 
Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of Mine, 
But love I gave thee, with Myself to love, 310 

And thou must love Me who have died for thee ! " 
The madman saith He said so : it is strange. 



NOTES. 



NOTES 

ON 

CHRISTMAS-EVE AND EASTER-DAY. 



These two poems were written at Florence in 1850, 
and published in London in the same year. Numerous 
changes have been made in the text since the first 
edition. They are cited in the Notes. 

In annotating the text, my principle has been simply 
to explain allusions, however simple, and to try to throw 
light on constructions which may seem obscure to the 
reader who is not familiar with Browning's peculiar 
method. The Biblical allusions I have explained by 
citations, even where they were well known, because it 
is often pleasant to be able to trace a phrase on the 
instant to chapter and verse. Moreover, the student 
will find it interesting to observe Browning's extraor- 
dinary familiarity with Scripture. In defining words I 
have preferred to err on the side of over-explicitness, 
because the effect of a line is lost if the reader must 
stop to consult a dictionary, or make a rough guess at 
the meaning. But I have tried to remember that this 
Selection is not a text-book, and so have barred out all 
merely curious notes. 

I have called attention, in the introductory essay, to 
the fact that this poem (the title would indicate that we 
are to consider the two together as one work) is unique, 
because in it Browning speaks in his own proper person. 
One Word More (Men and Women) is the only other 

15* 



152 NOTES. 

poem in which he avowedly does so. It is often easy 
in his other works to infer the face behind the mask, 
but, like Shakespeare's Sonnets, these two poems must 
gather significance from their personal character. 

3. Five minutes full I waited. 

There is a long break in the time between 1. 2 and 1. 3. The 
narrator retraces his steps to the moment, perhaps a half-hour 
before, when he had entered the chapel. A glance at 1. 185, 
below, will show the somewhat obscure connection. 

70. Pattens. 

Wooden clogs worn to keep the feet dry. 

73. A lance in rest. 

Ancient armor has a projection on the right side of the 
coat-of-mail which supported the lance, and was called "the 
rest." The lance in rest was an excellent defence. 

81. Like the Penitent Thief. 

Luke xxiii. 40. Of course no resemblance is asserted ex- 
cept that of previous occupation. 

89. Gallio. 

See Acts xvii. 12 fol. : "And when Paul was now about to 
open his mouth, Gallio said unto the Jews, ' If it were a mat- 
ter of wrong or of wicked lewdness, O ye Jews, reason would 
that I should bear with you. But if it be a question of words 
and names, and of your law, look ye to it ; for I will be no 
judge of such matters.' And he drave them from the judg- 
ment-seat. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the chief 
ruler of the synagogue, and beat him before the judgment- 
seat. And Gallio cared for none of these things." 

92. Tally ho. 

The cry to urge on the hounds. 



NOTES. 153 

102. St. John's Candlestick. 

See Rev. i. 12 and 20: "The seven stars are the angels of 
the seven churches; and the seven candlesticks which thou 
sawest are the seven churches." 

105. Grand Inquisitor. 

The highest office of the Inquisition was first held in Spain 
by Torquemada in 1483. He was president for life of the 
Supreme Inquisition. During the time that he held the office 
(fifteen years) 8800 people were burned alive. 

108. Seven Churches. 
See on 1. 102 above. 

115. " Shares." 

The forced rhyme of this whole introduction is a part of 
the mockery with which Browning treats the situation. 
Whenever he throws aside the irony, he changes the tone of 
the verse by choosing his rhymes seriously. (See 1. 187 fol.) 
As soon as he returns to the ridicule the rhymes become droll 
again. (See Is. 227, 228.) 

1 20. Marriage vestiment. 

See Matt. xxii. 11 fol. Vestment is the usual form, but 
Browning coins this correctly enough from the Latin vesti- 
mentum. 

132. Pentacle. 

A six-pointed star formed by two equal triangles. It was 
a mystic figure much used by astrologers of the Middle Ages. 

133. Conventicle. 

The word was opprobriously applied to assemblies of dis- 
senters from the Church of England. It means cimply a 
small gathering. 



154 NOTES. 

143. Pig-of-lead. 

An oblong mass of crude lead, weighing two hundred and 
fifty pounds. 

157. In severance. 

Loose, without connection. 

170. Dew of 'Hermon. 

See Ps. cxxxiii. 3 : "As the dew of Hermon, and as the 
dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion." Hermon 
(Mount Sion) is located at the southern extremity of the Leb- 
anon range of hills, thirty miles southwest of Damascus. 

222. Pharaoh, etc. 
See Gen. xl. 16 fol. 

238. Joseph. 

It will be recalled that Joseph interpreted the baker's dream 
of the three baskets, and declared it to prophesy the death 
which Pharaoh was preparing for him. But the preacher 
finds in the dream a proof of the Trinity, and the adoring 
people prefer his absurdity to Joseph's plain sense. 

533. The angeVs measuring-rod. 

See Rev. xxi. 15 fol.: "And he that talked with me had a 
golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof and 
the wall thereof." 

557. Liar, etc. 

The exclamation is the quick retort to the suggestion by 
his hearer, that the story is a lie or a dream. 

565. Basilica. 

The word originally meant a hall of justice, but, as the 
Roman basilicas suggested the form of the early Christian 
churches, the name came to be applied to the latter. 



NOTKS. 155 

567. Architrave. 

The lower part of the structure (entablature) which rests 
directly upon the columns. The frieze and cornice are imme- 
diately above the architrave. 

576. Baldachin. 

A structure in the form of a canopy, supported by pillars 
and placed over an altar. 

582. Like Behemoth, etc. 

For God's praise of Behemoth, see Job xl. 15 fol. 

583. At the silver belVs shrill tinkling. 

At the elevation of the host (sacrament) a bell is rung, and 
the multitude at the sound fall on their knees. 

600. I died, etc. 
See Rev. i. 18. 

634. Judgment drops, etc. 

The figure is of a tower which leans from the perpendicular, 
and becomes both unsightly and unsafe. 

656. The antique, sovereign Intellect. 

From the middle of the century before Christ, till the 
end of the reign of Augustus (14 A. D.), it was literally true 
that Intellect ruled the world. Julius Caesar, Augustus, and 
Maecenas were all distinguished patrons of letters and learn- 
ing. Not only is the age resplendent with brilliant names, 
but it is also true that government was never administered 
more in accordance with the logic of history. 

668. Sallust. 

Caius Sallustius Crispus was born in 86 B.C., and was 
a prominent man during the rise of Caesar. He became 
governor of Numidia, and returned to Rome with immense 



156 NOTES. 

wealth. He lived in the greatest luxury, and devoted himself 
to the study and writing of history. Of his greatest works 
only fragments are extant, the rest having probably been 
wantonly destroyed. 

676. True Christian Art. 

It was characteristic of Christian art to prefer moral sig- 
nificance to beauty and grace of form. A slight degree of 
moral meaning, or even of moral intention, outweighed every 
other quality. Art was judged by ethical, not by aesthetic 
standards. Pictures of saints, of martyrs, of the Deity, were 
acceptable, no matter how faulty the anatomy or repulsive the 
design. A ban was laid, in art as in life, upon human nature, 
unless distorted or perverted to conform to certain conven- 
tional, religious ideals of restraint, suffering, and deprivation. 
A premium was thus set upon imitation of traditional models, 
upon disregard of nature or absolute infidelity to her facts, 
upon all that leaves art beggared of imagination, originality, 
truth to nature, accuracy, and taste. With the exception of 
a few artists whose genius was great enough to assert itself 
in spite of these tendencies, art degenerated into a mere 
fanciful symbolism {Portents, 1. 675) or a Chamber of Horrors. 

678. Terpander's bird. 

The nightingale. Terpander was born in 676 B. C, and 
was called the Father of Greek music. He lived at Antissa, 
the town which professed to contain the grave of Orpheus. 

684. Aphrodite. 

The Greek goddess of Love, identified with the Roman 
Venus. 

755. A Colossus. 

A gigantic statue. The name was first applied to that at 
Rhodes. 



NOTES. 157 

799. Halle, Weimar, etc. 

University towns of Germany. Halle is in Saxony, on the 
Saale. The university is famous for its theology. Weimar 
is on the Ilm. Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland all 
lived there. Cassel has no university, but has excellent 
opportunities for study. Frankfort is on the Oder, in the 
province of Brandenburg. Gottingen is in Hanover, on the 
Seine. 

825. Preludious. 

An instance of Browning's license of coinage, especially 
bold when he wants a droll rhyme. 

841. A hake of undressed tow. 

Hake is still provincially used to denote a hank or bunch 
of flax or tow ready for the spinner. 

846. So??ie thrilling view of the surplice qtcestion. 

It may be hazarded that more intellect and more discussion 
have been lavished in England for the last twenty years upon 
the distinction between High Church and Low Church than 
upon the relation of Ireland to England. But not many 
Englishmen are sufficiently outside of the conflict to take so 
clear a view as Browning of the actual merits of the case. 

901. Drouthy. 

The form drouth is more commonly used in England than 
drought. Here the word means simply dry, squeaking. 

970. When A got leave, etc. 

The letters of early alphabets were originally hieroglyphs, 
made out of rough drawings of the objects to be denoted. 
A represented the head of the ox, being the initial letter of 
the Hebrew word Aleph, an ox. B represented a tent (Beth) ; 
G, the head and neck of a camel (Gimel). 



158 NOTES. 

982. Harvey. 

Physician to James I. and Charles I. He discovered the 
circulation of the blood. 

1004. Other birds. 

For purposes of poetry the bat may be called a bird, per- 
haps. But it is well to remember that the species belongs 
actually to the mammalia. 

1056. Fane. 

A temple. Do you insist upon worshipping outside the 
usual method, and pointing a finger of direction to your own 
favorite road, although it leads away from the one trodden for 
ages by worshipful souls? 

1089. Levigable. 
Capable of being reduced to fine powder. 

1 1 12. The Middle Verb. 

The reflexive form of the verb. 

1 1 13. Turk-like, etc. 

That is, disputing fiercely over the technicalities of Greek 
metre. The anapaest is an unusual foot in trimeter. 

1 115. The halt and maimed " Iketides." 

A tragedy of iEschylus ( The Suppliants), which has come 
down to us in a much mutilated form. 

1 1 26. Herr Heine {before his fever). 

Heine's life up to 1848 was one of the wildest dissipation. 
A 4 " that time he was violently ill, lost his sight, and was never 
restored to health. Soon after, he renounced his infidelity. 

1 131. Meticulous. 
Fearful, timid. 



NOTES. 159 

1257. Raree-show. 

Peep-show; rare show. The word perpetuates a mispro- 
nunciation of rare. 

1283. Pascal. 

A celebrated French philosopher, mathematician, and 
religionist (1623-1622). 

1307. Breccia. 
Pudding-stone. 



FIRST READINGS OF CHRISTMAS-EVE. 

i. The first edition has 

" Out of the little chapel I flung 
Into the fresh night-air again. 
Five minutes I waited, held my tongue." 

211. The first edition has " light." 

283. The first edition has " the " for that. 

444. The first edition has " I remembered." 

602. The first edition has " sat I there." 

682. The first edition has 

" Till a filthy saint rebuked the gust 
With which he chanced to get a sight 

He glanced a thought above the toes of." 
716. The first edition has "the senses." 
722. The first edition has " And it tight." 



160 NOTES. 

885. The first edition has " Gave, for residuum." 

921. The first edition has " by " for with. 

954. The first edition has " the more." 

966. The first edition has " where " for whence. 

1015. The first edition has " his head." 

1097. The first edition has " the damage." 

1 149. The first edition has "the plainest." 

1 1 50. The first edition has " this world." 

1 1 64. The first edition has " Sending me on a pilgrimage." 

1303. The first edition has " At a word." 

1304. The first edition has " Its river-pulse." 

1310. The first edition has " That the waterless cup." 

1356. The first edition has " Without my own made." 

1373. The first edition has " in " for of. 



EASTER-DAY. 

The second part of this poem will seem to most 
readers even more stupendous than Christmas-Eve. It 
is said that modern poets are half ashamed to mention 
God or Christ. Not so this poet. The vital question, 
" What does life mean ? " seems to me more completely 
answered in this poem than in any utterance which the 
world has heard since the Sermon on the Mount. The 
reasonableness of a probation upon earth, the definite- 



NOTES. l6l 

ness of God's command to men and women, the cer- 
tainty which follows choice — of evil or of good — are 
all given the force of high poetic expression. Browning 
tries to reveal the divine method of utilizing the great 
moments of the soul's life to make spiritual the long run 
of human experience. In a dream, a vision, — whether 
in the body or out of the body who can say ? — the soul 
meets the announcement of the Judgment-Day. He has 
chosen earth. The effort to realize the unseen has 
wearied him. He has revelled in life's joys with a 
delusive hope of lifting by and by his eyes to heaven. 
Now comes the supreme surprise. A voice says, " The 
world for thee ! Take it ! " But in the same instant are 
revealed to the soul the barrenness of knowledge, the 
incompleteness of beauty, the poverty of love compared 
with the things which God has prepared for them that 
love him. The soul is granted each request for future 
freedom in this world, but each is given with a scorn as 
bitter as death and a reproach as deep as hell. At last 
the soul sees the world in its true meaning, — a vesti- 
bule, fair it is true, but empty, — leading to a palace of 
divine beauty. The children who linger playing outside 
over their heaps of moneys, of knowledges, of love, are 
blind to the light that streams from the royal presence- 
chamber. When a sense of this fatal and stupid loss at 
last forces itself upon the soul he entreats but one 
boon, — that he may be permitted, at least, to pursue life 
as if he had not forfeited the chance of salvation. 

" Only let me go on, go on, 
Still hoping ever and anon 
To reach one eve the Better Land." 

Now the Voice first gives hope of forgiveness and of 
renewed opportunity. To realize the value of proba- 



1 62 NOTES. 

tion, and to desire that it may continue, is a long step 
toward fulfilling the end of life. And so the curtain of 
the poem drops upon the sunlight of Easter morn. 

1 54. Coleoptera. 
An order of insects, including the beetles. 

160. A Grignon with the Regent* s crest. 

Grignon was a French antiquary (1723- 1780). He con- 
ducted many important excavations, and was also a practical 
worker in metals. His mark on a snuff-box is proof of its 
artistic value. 

169. A Semitic guess. 

The group of Semitic languages, of which the Hebrew and 
Assyrian are members, has given philologists more room for 
guesses than all other languages together. 

194. Dionysus Zagrius. 

Zagrius was a surname of the mystic Dionysus (Bacchus). 
The legends regarding him are almost inextricably confused, 
the traditions of various times and countries relating to analo- 
gous deities having been transferred to him. 

393. The Lucumons. 
The Tarquins, so-called from the name of the elder, — Lu- 



394. Fourier's scheme. 

Fourier was a French writer on socialism (1772- 1837) who 
devised an elaborate plan for the life of a community. 

447. Tice. 

Entice, but not an abbreviation. 



NOTES. 163 

488. Queen Mab. 

" She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes 
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 
On the forefinger of an alderman, 
Drawn with a team of little atomies 
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep. 

And in this state she gallops night by night 

Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love." 

Romeo and Juliet, Act I. Sc. 4. 

574. That was too hard. 

Compare the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, Canto 66 : 

" I must abjure the balm of life : I must, 
Scared by some after-reckoning, ta'en on trust, 
Or lured with hope of some diviner drink 
To fill the cup — when crumbled into dust ! " 

630. A new tract of death. 

See Gen. xix. 28 : " And Abraham gat up early in the 
morning to the place where he stood before the Lord ; and he 
looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah and toward all the land 
of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country 
went up as the smoke of a furnace." 

670. Here the probation was for thee. 

Compare the Pope's soliloquy, in the Ring and the Book: 

"The moral sense grows but by exercise, 
'Tis even as man grew, probatively 
Initiated in Godship, set to make 
A fairer moral world than this he finds. 

Life is probation, and this earth no goal, 
But starting-point for man, compel him strive, 
Which means in man as good as reach the goal." 

672. It must choose betwixt. 

Miss E. D. West, in an excellent article on Browning as a 
Preacher {LittelVs Living Age, Dec. 23, 187 1), says : "The idea 



1 64 NOTES. 

of a struggle and a wrestling in which the wills of men are to 
be engaged — the central idea of early and mediaeval Christian 
thought — is recognized fully and distinctly by Browning in 
all that he has written. He holds that men's business in this 
world is labor and strife and conquest, and not merely free, 
unconscious growth and harmonious development. He differs 
thoroughly from the modern thinking, which sees no moral 
evil distinct from and antagonistic to good ; and again and 
again, directly or indirectly, his poems let us see how wide is 
his separation, both in belief and feeling, from the many poets 
of these present days, who have returned to the idea round 
which the old Greek poetry had all revolved, of the power- 
lessness of man's will and the drifting of his life before an 
unalterable destiny. In a recent criticism of Browning he is 
distinguished as being pre-eminently the poet of impulse. 
This he doubtless is, but it seems to me that his chief point of 
difference from the majority of modern poets is in his being 
emphatically the poet of the will." 

7 1 2. The filthy shall be filthy still. 
Com. Rev. xxii. n. 

748. The bee-bird and the aloe-flower. 

The bee-bird is the spotted fly-catcher, so called from its 
catching bees. The aloe belongs to a genus of evergreen 
plants. Its blossom is symbolical among the Mohammedans. 

798. Buonarroti's brow. 
Michael Angelo Buonarroti. 



NOTBS. 165 

SAUL. 

The account of the strange relation which existed 
between Saul and David is contained in 1 Samuel xvi. 
14 fol. : 

" But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and 
an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him. And Saul's 
servants said unto him, ' Behold now, an evil spirit from 
God troubleth thee. Let our lord now command thy 
servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man who 
is a cunning player on an harp : and it shall come to pass, 
when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall 
play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.' And Saul 
said unto his servants, ' Provide me now a man that can 
play well, and bring him to me.' Then answered one 
of the servants, and said, ' Behold, I have seen a son 
of Jesse the Beth-lehemite, that is cunning in playing, 
and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent 
in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord is with 
him.' Wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse and 
said, ' Send me David thy son, which is with the sheep.' 
And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle 
of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto 
Saul. And David came to Saul and stood before him : 
and he loved him greatly; and he became his armor- 
bearer. And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, ' Let David, I 
pray thee, stand before me ; for he hath found favor in 
my sight.' And it came to pass, when the evil spirit 
from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and 
played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed and was 
well, and the evil spirit departed from him." 

The first nine sections or strophes of Saul were pub- 
lished in No. VII. of Bells and Poinegranates, in 1845. 



1 66 NOTES. 

The last ten sections were added, and the whole poem 
published in Men and Women, in 1855. The first 
version was printed in short lines, three feet in one and 
two in the next. But when the revision was made, it 
was printed in the more suitable and dignified penta- 
meter. The various verbal changes are specified in the 
Notes. 

David's song to Saul is divided into two great parts. 
The first seven strophes are mere repetition of music 
and words with which Saul has long been familiar. The 
senses — almost extinct in the long fast and agony — 
must be called back by well-known tones. So we have 

I. The charms which the brutes know: 

{a) To the sheep. 

(b) " " quail. 

(<r) " " crickets. 

(d) " " jerboa. 

II. The songs which mark the great epochs of human 
life: 

(a) The reaper's song. 

(b) " requiem. 

(c) " marriage chorus. 
{d) " battle march. 

(e) " chant of the priests. 

The remaining strophes are given to the song espe- 
cially inspired by the present need of Saul. The soul 
has been rescued from drowning in the depths of de- 
spair. He must now be made to feel that life is worth 
living. He must see that the universe is a harmony and 
not a discord. But to the learned and thoughtful mind 
it must seem a chaos of evil, unless the prophet's hand 
can lift the veil, and show a life beyond this, where 



NOTES. 167 

infinite desire meets infinite satisfaction. As the boy 
sings, the prophetic vision is given to him. He cele- 
brates the praise of one gift of God after another, until, 
by instinct, he reaches the last and highest gift hitherto 
unseen by any eye. He scales the mountain-top which 
no foot of man has trod. The love of God in Christ, 
who has brought life and immortality to light, is revealed 
to him. He approaches this secret by a number of 
steps. 

III. The song inspired by the need of the moment 
celebrates 

(a) The joy of mere living. 

(b) " " " vast human life. 

(c) " " " posthumous fame. 

(d) " hope of immortality. 

(e) " belief in a personal help and a Divine Love in Christ. 

1. Abner. 

The captain of Saul's host. (See 1 Sam. xiv. 50.) The 
Bible narrative does not specify by whom David was received. 

45. Jerboa. 

A small jumping animal, having very long hind legs and 
a long tail. It is also called the jumping hare. It has its 
burrow in the ground, and watches from it for small prey. 

58. Buttress an arch. 
A fine figure to describe the forming of a line of battle. 

60. As the Levites, etc. 

See 1 Chron. xxiii. 30. It is a part of the duty of this 
priestly family " to stand every morning to thank and praise 
the Lord, and likewise at even." 



168 NOTES. 

73. The hunt of the bear. 

It will be remembered that David not long afterwards 
killed both a lion and a bear which attacked his flock. (See 
1 Sam. xvii. 34 fol.) He was doubtless already a successful 
hunter. 

80. Thy father. 

Saul was the son of Kish. 

82. Thy mother, etc. 

Neither mother nor brothers of Saul are mentioned in the 
Bible. 

89. That boyhood of wonder and hope. 

Samuel anointed Saul and prophesied his future greatness, 
when the young man was sent out on a peaceful search after 
his father's lost asses. (See 1 Sam. x.) 

162. More indeed. 

Cf. Rabbi Ben Ezra : 

" Grow old along with me ! 
The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made : 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith ' A whole I planned, 
Youth shows but half; trust God : see all, nor be afraid ! ' " 

/ 93. My shield and my sword. 

Cf. 1 Sam. xvii. 45 fol. : " Then said David to the Philistine 
[Goliath], ' Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, 
and with a shield ; but I come to thee in the name of the Lord 
of hosts."' 

202. Evanish. 

An intensive form of the verb " to vanish." 



NOTES. 169 

204. Kidron. 

(Kedron or Cedron), a brook near Jerusalem. 

230. As men do a flower. 

Browning used this comparison fourteen years before in 

Pippa Passes, Sc. ii. 1. 4 : 

" I overlean 

This length of hair and lustrous front — they turn 

Like an entire flower upward — eyes — lips — last 

Your chin — no, last your throat turns — 'tis their scent 

Pulls my face down upon you ! " 

281. The dream, the probation, the fr elude, etc. 

The remainder of this strophe contains the pith of Brown- 
ing's theology. 

291. Sabaoth. 
Hosts (Hebrew). 

310. A man like to me. 

The point of this passage must not be missed by forgetting 
that it is supposed to have been uttered more than a thousand 
years before the birth of Christ, and long before man had 
conceived of immortality, — much less of redemption from sin. 

318. The whole earth was awakened. 

Says Mr. Dowden, in his excellent essay on Browning : "Mr. 
Browning's most characteristic feeling for nature appears in 
his rendering of those aspects of sky or earth or sea, of sun- 
set or noonday or dawn, which seem to acquire some sudden 
and passionate significance ; which seem to be charged with 
some spiritual secret eager for disclosure ; in his rendering of 
those moments which betray the passion at the heart of things, 
which thrill and tingle with prophetic fire. When lightning 
searches for the guilty lovers, Ottima and Scbald, like an 
angelic sword plunged into the gloom ; when the tender twi- 
light, with its one chrysolite star, grows aware, and the light 



170 NOTES. 

and shade make up a spell, and the forests by their mystery 
and sound and silence mingle together two human lives for- 
ever; when the apparition of the moon-rainbow appears glo- 
riously after storm, and Christ is in his heaven; when to 
David the stars shoot out the pain of pent knowledge, and in 
the gray of the hills at morning there dwells a gathered inten- 
sity, — then Nature rises from her sweet ways of use and wont 
and shows herself the Priestess, the Pythoness, the Divinity 
which she is. Or rather, through nature, the spirit of God 
addresses itself to the spirit of man." 



FIRST READINGS OF SAUL. 



The first version has " Be brightened. The water be wet." 

8. Not a sound, etc. 

The first version has " No sound," and substitutes " or " for 
nor after prayer. 

9. To betoken, etc. 

The first version has 

" To betoken that Saul and the Spirit 
Have gone their dread ways." 

10. And that, faint, etc. 

This line was inserted in 1855. 

13. Just broken. 

The first version has " As thou brak'st them." 

14. Were now. 

The first version omits now. 



NOTES. 171 

19. That extends. 
The first version has " That leads." 

22. But spoke. 

The first version has " And " for But. 

23. At the first. 

The first version has " And first." 

26. Against it, gigantic. 

The first version has " gigantic, against it." 

30. He relaxed not. 

The first version has " So he went not." 

42. Each leave. 

The first version has " Leave each." 

50. Grasps at hand. 
The first version omits at. 

54. The land has none left. 
The first version has " The land is left none." 

58. Wherein. 
The first version has " When." 

69. Not a muscle, etc. 

The first version has " No muscle." " No sinew." 

70. Oh, the wild joys. 

The first version has " And the wild joys." 

71. The strong rending. 

The first version has " The rending their boughs from the 
palm-trees." 



172 NOTES. 

72. Of the plunge. 

The first version has " A " for the. The hunt of the bear. 
The first version has " The haunt of the bear." 

76. Bulrushes. 

The first version has " tall rushes." 

yj. That the water. 

The first version omits That. 

78. Mali's life, the mere living. 

The first version has " Man's life here, mere living." 

79. All the heart. 

The first version omits all. 

81. With the armies. 

The first version has " to the wolf hunt." 

83. The low song. 

The first version omits low. 

88. Strained true. 

The first version has " so true." 

89. Of wonder. 

The first version has "with wonder." 

90. Of the future, etc. 

The first version has " in the future, the eye's eagle scope." 

92. And all gifts. 

The first version has " Oh, all gifts." 



NOTES. 173 

93. On one head, etc. 

This passage has been so much altered that we give the 
first version complete : 

" On one head the joy and the pride, 
Even rage like the throe 
That opes the rock, helps its glad labor, 
And lets the gold go — 
And ambition that sees a sun lead it — 
Oh, all of these — all 
Combine to unite in one creature — 
Saul! " 



AN EPISTLE. 

17. Snake-stone. 

A stone or some hardened vegetable substance popularly 
supposed to cure the bite of the most poisonous snakes. 

28. Vespasian. 

(Emperor of Rome, 69-79) conquered all Judea during his 
reign, and destroyed Jerusalem. This allusion approximately 
fixes the date of the events of the poem. The invasion 
was in 70 A. D. 

42. A viscid choler, etc. 

Thickened or ropy bile, which Karshish had discovered to 
be a symptom in that intermittent fever called tertian fever, 
because its paroxysms return once in three days. 

44. Falling sickness. 

Epilepsy. Cf. Julius Ccesar, Act I., Sc. 2, 1. 256. 

49. Run-a-gate. 

A corruption of renegade, a fugitive, a vagabond. 



174 NOTES. 

55. Gum-tragacanth. 
A gum of great toughness, obtained from various plants. 

109. Sanguine. 
Having abundant blood and active circulation. 

177. Greek fire. 

This precursor of gunpowder was a highly inflammable 
substance which would burn under water. Its invention is 
usually ascribed to Callinicus of Heliopolis, in 688 A. D., 
but it was probably imported from India somewhat earlier. 
In any case there is an anachronism in this allusion. See 
note on 1. 28 above. 

281. Blue flowering borage. 

This herb was formerly supposed to have wonderful ex- 
hilarating properties. Like some other plants of the same 
order, borage contains nitrate of potash. 

291. Ridge of hills, etc. 

Browning finds a peculiarly weird effect in low-lying hills. 
Cf. " Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." 

308. Face. 

Cf. Saul, 1. 310. 

310. But Love I gave thee. 

I can add no better comment, as the final one upon these 
four great spiritual poems, than a few lines from Browning 
himself. In A Death in the Desert he describes the last hour 
of St. John. It is spent in speaking such words as John 
believes the disciples will most need. He says : 

" I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
All questions in the earth and out of it, 
And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 



NOTES. 175 

Wouldst thou unprove this to re-prove the proved ? 
In life's mere minute, with power to use that proof, 
Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung? 
Thou hast it ; use it and forthwith, or die ! 

1 For I say, this is death and the sole death, 
When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, 
Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, 
And lack of love from love made manifest ; 
A lamp's death when, replete with oil, it chokes ; 
A stomach's when, surcharged with food, it starves. 
With ignorance was surety of a cure. 
When man, appalled at nature, questioned first, 
' What if there lurk a might behind this might ? ' 
He needed satisfaction God could give, 
And did give, as ye have the written word : 
But when he finds might still redouble might, 
Yet asks, ' Since all is might, what use of will? ' — 
Will, the one source of might, — he being man 
With a man's will and a man's might, to teach 
In little how the two combine in large, — 
That man has turned round on himself and stands, 
Which in the course of nature is, to die. 

1 And when man questioned, ' What if there be love 
Behind the will and might, as real as they?' — 
He needed satisfaction God could give, 
And did give, as ye have the written word : 
But when, beholding that love everywhere, 
He reasons, ' Since such love is everywhere, 
And since ourselves can love and would be loved, 
We ourselves make the love, and Christ was not,' — 
How shall ye help this man who knows himself, 
That he must love and would be loved again, 
Yet, owning his own love that proveth Christ, 
Rejecteth Christ through very need of Him ? 
The lamp o'erswims with oil, the stomach flags 
Loaded with nurture, and that man's soul dies." 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 386 878 3 



♦$'♦•' 



■ 



^^M 






'■fiV.v 



t i ■ H ** H 



y '♦ 



